"Certainly," replied the prince, with energy. "Sport and war ought to be reserved for the nobility, not because those who are not noble cannot also fire a gun or wield a sword, but because they cannot do it in the right spirit. Nor is this mere theory; the question has its practical side also. The spirit of innovation, of insolent disobedience to the order of things as ordained by God, is everywhere stirring. In our state they have most unfortunately attempted to keep it down by gentle means and by concessions. I believe that sternness and severity alone can check this spirit. We are sure of the men who have been for three years under, our control and influence; but we are not sure of the officer who is not noble. Send a platoon under a Lieutenant Smith, or Jones, against a rebellious mob, and ten to one he will see among the mob a brother Smith, or a cousin Jones, and therefore hesitate to give the command Fire! at the right moment. Take your officers from the nobility, and only from the nobility, and such a thing cannot happen; and you can quell the rising of a whole town like Grunwald with a single battalion."
The prince spoke with great energy and strong condemnation of the concessions which the king had made that spring to the liberal party, and to the spirit of the times generally, by convoking a legislative assembly of the whole people.
"I do not see," he said, "where this is to end. If the king does not wish--and I believe he really does not wish--that a sheet of paper, which they call a constitution, should rise between him and the people, according to which he is forced to govern, whether he will or not, then he ought not to have conjured up even the shadow of a constitution. The shadow is soon followed by the substance. I confess that I am disgusted by the patience of the king, while these fellows cry so loud; and that I have long doubted whether I could honorably serve a monarch who thus misjudges the duty of a king 'by the grace of God.'"
When the prince was thus judging things by the standard of his Russian ideas of absolute government, it sometimes happened that there arose in Helen's naturally good and affectionate heart a repugnance, not unmixed with terror, towards one who could utter such inhuman thoughts in cold blood. At other times she would have shrunk from the fearful consequences of such principles, but now she was too deeply irritated by the wound which Oswald's treachery had inflicted on her proud heart, and, as is the case with violent dispositions, she had hastened from one extreme to the other. Helen hated Oswald. She wept tears of indignation and of shame when she thought how dear this man had been to her, and how near she had been to the danger of showing him her love for him. The treachery itself was no longer doubtful to her mind. Emily's manner had changed so strikingly of late that even outsiders had noticed it. The young lady who had formerly found happiness only in the wildest turmoil of pleasure, now avoided society as much as she had formerly sought it; and when she could not escape from invitations to her former circles, she seemed to have only scoffing and scorn for all she had admired in other days. She declared that the officers were stupid, dancing a childish amusement, and a masked ball the height of absurdity. She treated the ladies with undisguised irony, and the men with open contempt, especially her husband, who did not know what to make of the strange change, and only discovered gradually the one fact, that of all the many foolish things which Albert Cloten had done in his time, the making of an accomplished coquette, like the "divine Emily Breesen," his wife, was beyond all doubt the most foolish. Most people laughed, and said: "It is a whim of the little woman's; she will soon come right again." Others, who were less harmless, said: "There is something behind that! When a young woman treats the whole world, not excluding her husband, en canaille, she does so only for the sake of a man who is himself her whole world." But they racked their brains in vain to find out who the lucky man could be. Some guessed it was young Count Grieben, who had formerly courted her; others, Baron Sylow; still others, even Prince Waldenberg; and only Helen Grenwitz knew that they were all mistaken, and that the object of Emily's love was not to be met with in the aristocratic circles of the Faubourg St. Germain of Grunwald.
If Anna Maria had known what an admirable ally she had at that moment for the execution of her plan in Oswald Stein, she would probably have been less displeased with this excessively objectionable and dangerous young man. At all events, it seemed as if the relations between Helen and the prince were gradually assuming the desired shape. She considered it at least a good sign that Helen expressed no desire to improve the conversation in the boudoir next to the card-room by inviting other young men to take part in it, and that she did not frown contemptuously when she (Anna Maria) recently ventured to say: "That would be a son-in-law to my heart," but quietly let the dark lashes droop upon the gently-blushing cheeks.
CHAPTER XIV.
Any one who had seen Oswald Stein and Albert Timm sitting every night behind their bottle, in the city cellar of Grunwald, both full of jokes and jests and merry tales, would have been convinced that both of them lived fully up to the motto of the illustrious club of "the Rats," to which they had the honor to belong. They evidently enjoyed life; and yet this was true only of Albert Timm, who had seriously adopted the first and sole article of faith of the secret society: "Live as thou wilt desire to have feasted when thou diest," and made it the principle of his existence. For Oswald, on the contrary, this wild life was but a means to stifle within him the incessant, painful longing after a nobler model of life. The memory of all "that had once been his" mingled like the notes of an Æolian harp with the wild allegro of his present life. His enthusiastic youth, when rosy clouds edged the horizon, and behind them lay a mysterious, wonderful future; his days of supreme happiness at Grenwitz, where the old legend of the paradise seemed to be repeated for him; his friendly intimacy with great and at least good men;--whither had all this flown? His youth was gone forever, with all the sweet rosy dreams of youth. Of the paradise, nothing was left but the bitter taste of the fruit from the tree of knowledge: that fickleness of heart and true love can never go hand in hand .... And his friends? With Berger he had parted, and probably forever, at the gate of the insane asylum; in Oldenburg he now hated a rival, and the rich aristocrat, the favorite of fortune, who easily overcame all impediments that exhausted the full strength of others. Franz, who had stood by him like a brother in the most embarrassing moments of his life, he had treated with black ingratitude; and in vain did he try to excuse himself on the ground that he could not possibly have continued to be the friend of a character which, in its self-poised calmness and dispassionate seriousness, was so entirely different from his own. From Bemperlein, the good, harmless, honorable man, who had met him with the offer of his enthusiastic friendship, he was separated by the consciousness that he had mortally offended him through her whom he worshipped, so that when he met him in the street he was apt to look to the other side in his painful embarrassment.
And what had he gained in return for so much lost happiness? The few rare moments which Oswald gave to serious thoughts on his present situation were unsatisfactory enough. His position in the college was almost untenable, and yet he had occupied it scarcely three months. The whole "humanity" of the rector, Clemens, was not sufficient to cover with the cloak of charity the great and the small vices which Oswald had committed in his official capacity; and Mrs. Clemens declared before the assembled dramatic club, with regard to the same unfortunate young man, that "she had cherished a serpent in her bosom." And the worthy lady had good reason to complain. She had met Oswald with a three-fold friendship: as the mother of two marriageable daughters, as the wife of his superior, and as the president of the dramatic club, and she had been deeply offended in all these capacities. Oswald had not only failed to return the bashful attachment which had begun to germinate in the hearts of Thusnelda and Fredegunda, but he had called these victims of his caprice before a numerous company "little goslings, who wanted nothing but the plumage to be perfect." Ah, it had all been duly and faithfully reported! He had compared the fair president, the wife of his presiding officer, with an old turkey hen, who was so proud of the goslings she had hatched that her empty head was utterly turned; and, finally, he had not only ceased to frequent the dramatic club, after reading there three times amid general applause, but he had passed over, with flags flying, so to say, into the hostile camp, and had become an active member of the lyric club which had rapidly risen under Mrs. Jager's direction to a splendor unheard of in the annals of the dramatic club. Certainly, if Oswald had felt no other misdeed but this on his conscience, the cloud of dark discontent which was continually hanging on his brow would have seemed natural enough.
But Oswald had to answer for more than this faithlessness. His connection with Emily Cloten, which he had so suddenly begun, partly from caprice and partly from real attachment, now weighed upon his soul like a heavy burden, especially since the reckless, passionate temper of the young lady threatened to betray their secret at every moment. Emily no sooner felt sure of Oswald's affections than she thought she could throw down the gauntlet to the whole world. "To love you, and to be loved by you, is my sole wish and will--everything else is utterly indifferent to me," she said; and she acted accordingly. Was she to bridle her inordinate desires, now that her heart for the first time clearly felt its own capacities? And she loved Oswald with the whole passion of a naturally most tender, affectionate heart, and with the whole recklessness of a woman who had all her life looked upon the world only as a football of her sovereign pleasure. It was in vain that Oswald reminded her of the duties of his position--of the difficulties arising from his narrow circumstances. "I cannot conceive how you can hesitate between the weariness you feel in teaching your boys and the delight we feel in each other's company. Why don't you give up the stupid college, and live only for me?" "But, my dear child, I am already living almost alone for you; and if matters continue so much longer. Rector Clemens will not only consent to my leaving the college, but desire that I should only live for you." "Oh, wouldn't that be splendid!" cried Emily, clasping her hands; "then we could carry out my pet wish, and go to Paris, where there are no stupid people watching every step we take." Oswald shrugged his shoulders. "And what are we to live on in Paris?" Emily made a long face; but the next moment she was laughing again, and said: "Oh, that will take care of itself if we are once there."
The desire to get away from Grunwald, where indeed her position was every moment liable to be exposed, had of late become a fixed idea with Emily, and she returned constantly to the danger they were running. She wanted to enjoy Oswald's love without interruption, and not to pay for every half-hour spent stealthily in his company with long days of care and anxiety. So far they had met either in Primula's boudoir, or in Ferrytown at the house of Emily's old nurse, Mrs. Lemberg, which they could easily reach as long as the ice held that covered the bay between the island and the continent. Primula had been initiated into the secret after Emily's recklessness had once led to a most ridiculous scene of discovery, and it was characteristic that the author of the "Cornflowers" had soon overcome her first feeling of jealousy, and henceforth looked upon this "union of loving souls" as extremely romantic, and found that the lovers in their helplessness, threatened by an unloving world, were highly pitiable, and she herself, as the protector of such an "heroic passion," worthy of all admiration! She dreamt herself more and more into the part she was playing, and the subscribers to the "Daffodils," for whose "album" Primula Veris was now writing her poems, were forced to read long pages about "the twisted thread of love; the silent, secret doings of secret love, shunning the light of day;" and especially of the "chaste guardian of the faithful love." She even warned her readers not to imagine that the latter was "the moon--the pale virgin," but hinted very explicitly at the meaning.