Through Night to Light: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

"Thus you see, Oswald, the world becomes a Cosmos, and we cease to be mere atoms whirling about in the infinite space without a reasonable government, while nobody knows whence we come and whither we go. The great fault of your life, which it is true you could hardly avoid with such an experience as you had in your young days, is that you have always lived for yourself only and never truly for others. Thus you have drifted into a false position, in which you could not be useful to the world, and the world could not be useful to you. Now, all this will be different. From friendship for me, you have made the sacrifice of taking a step which I know well--and better now than before--must be very painful to your whole nature. But I am convinced you will bless this step hereafter. The trial year which you mean to devote to the college at Grunwald will be in more senses than one a trial year for you. You will see whether you can obtain the hardest of all victories, the victory over yourself--over your own arbitrary, sovereign will. I wish you were, like myself, engaged to some good, sensible girl. That would compel you to work and compel you to struggle, if not for your own interest, at least for the sake of her who is dearer to you--ten thousand times dearer to you--than your own life, and you would see how easy the battle, how easy the victory would be to you."

Oswald made no reply. He felt convinced of the truth of what his companion said, but at the same time he felt painfully ashamed. For the face of truth is stern, and makes him tremble who does not worship it at the cost of every feeling of his own.

Thus they walked side by side in deep silence, until they reached the top of the mountain, where the carriage was waiting. They got in again, and now they rolled in a quick trot down hill towards the little town which was lying at their feet in the bosom of a secluded valley, surrounded on all sides by well-wooded hills, and veiled at this moment by the gray evening mists. It was the end of their day's journey, and for Oswald the place of his destination--a watering-place, called Fichtenau, renowned far and near on account of its charming position, its invigorating baths of spruce leaves, and more recently yet its large and admirably-kept insane asylum, which Doctor Birkenhain, a man of great intelligence and large experience in such matters, had founded there a few years ago.

Oswald's heart was filled with strange sensations as he saw from the corner in which he was leaning back the rocks and the trees flit by, and felt that every step brought him nearer to the place which had occupied his mind during the last months so persistently and so painfully. How unmeaning the name had sounded to him when he first heard it mentioned at Grenwitz as the place where Melitta von Berkow's suffering husband was living! Then he did not know Melitta yet, then he did not anticipate that he would a few days later be enchained by the charms of that beautiful woman. Afterwards he had heard her mention the name, though only rarely, and always with much reluctance, and in his state of boundless delight the place had given him very much the impression with which the owner of a superb, brilliant house looks upon a dark room which he does not like to open, and of which he avoids speaking, because years ago a person who was dear to him had committed suicide there. Then the time had come when Melitta obeyed Dr. Birkenhain's summons and went to see her dying husband--at last the painful, wretched days during which he knew she was at Fichtenau by the side of her unfortunate husband, and when he received from Fichtenau those letters in which every word was a longing kiss. In those days Fichtenau had appeared to him alternately the grave and the cradle of his happiness, as he at one moment fancied Berkow's death would remove all impediments in the way of his marrying Melitta, and then again feared the very same event might forever separate him from her. Then came the fatal day when he found out that the man whom he had from the beginning looked upon as his most formidable rival was with Melitta; when malicious tongues had whispered the most hateful explanations of this fact in his ear, and he, unhappy man, had but too readily listened to these abominable slanders. Alas! he had even then betrayed his own love by his own acts, and, like a ship-wrecked man, who, in order to save himself and his treasures, pitilessly pushes his best friend from the frail plank into the ocean, he had sacrificed Melitta in order to justify his passion for the fair Helen before the tribunal of his own heart! And finally, to fill the cup to overflowing, and to prove as it were to his troubled mind that the whole world was out of joint, and one error more or less did not matter much, the same place must hold both the woman he loved so ardently, who sought comfort for the moments she must needs spend at the deathbed of her husband in the arms of a fascinating roué, and the revered friend and teacher, whose genius, so like a bright blazing torch, had just been extinguished in the deep darkness of insanity! Only a little later death had robbed him of the boy whom he had learnt to love as a brother, and Fate had broken, in a most painful manner, his connection with a great and noble family; then he had seen his rival wounded unto death by his ball, lying at his feet, and separating him forever by this one deed from the beloved girl, from whom a thousand other reasons would, even without this, have compelled him to flee. Was it a wonder that he felt as if the whole earth had no more suitable asylum for him than a cell adjoining that of his friend and teacher in Doctor Birkenhain's famous Insane Asylum at Fichtenau?

Doctor Braun had originally suggested to him this trip for scientific purposes, but now Oswald had insisted upon starting at once, although the former had endeavored to postpone the visit under one pretext or another for some time, and this for good reasons. He had written to Doctor Birkenhain, without telling Oswald, and asked him to give him a minute description of Berger's case. Doctor Birkenhain had replied, that Berger's insanity consisted exclusively in the fixed idea of the absolute non-existence of all things, but that otherwise he was in full possession of all his mental powers, and would have been dismissed from the institution long since but for his own urgent desire to prolong his stay there. Doctor Braun knew perfectly well that under these circumstances a visit to Fichtenau might be extremely dangerous to Oswald's eccentric mind, excited as he was by all that had happened of late. The sight of a madman might have restored him to tranquillity; but the intercourse with a hypochondriac, whose genius shone brightly even in Its aberrations, might possibly only tend to confirm him in his extravagant ideas.

Moved by this apprehension Doctor Braun had postponed the visit to Fichtenau till the end of their journey, instead of going there at first, as Oswald had wished. He had hoped that the frequent intercourse with other men, the beneficent influence of a journey through a beautiful country, brilliant in all the glory of autumn, would bring Oswald back to calmer and more reasonable views of life, and enable him to meet Berger, if not with the superiority of this calmness, at least without danger for himself.

Now Franz saw himself deceived in his hopes. He was by no means pleased with Oswald's excited manner, and would have liked best to turn back, if that had still been possible. He sat casting now and then an anxious glance at Oswald, who, throwing himself back in his corner, looked with fixed eyes upon the little town below, and he determined at least to shorten the visit as much as possible, and to prevent his friend's being alone with Berger while they were there together.

CHAPTER III.

The sun had already set for half an hour behind the broad back of the well-wooded hill, which embraces Fichtenau on the western side, when the carriage left the mountains and rolled down into the plain in which the town is situated. The wearied horses enjoyed the level ground and the easier motion of the carriage, and hastened to meet their good supper of oats. They seemed to gather new strength from the shrill notes of a clarinet which were heard high above the unfailing roll of a big drum, from the midst of a close circle of men on the commons near the town-gate, who surrounded a band of rope-dancers. The road passed close by the place, and as the crowd of curious people had overflowed upon the turnpike, the driver saw himself compelled to drive more slowly, and at last to stop altogether, as the people were not willing, in spite of his scolding and cursing, to give up their vantage ground, and persisted in remaining on the spot, from which they could comfortably look down upon the performance.

The good people thought it naturally quite hard to be disturbed just then, as the wandering artists were at that moment engaged in performing their masterpiece, with which they always wound up the evening's work, so as to dismiss the audience with the most favorable impression.