"Cousin Boslaf!" shrieked the old man, "ay, Cousin Boslaf! He called me so, and she too, and all the rest with them and after them, my children, and children's children!"
"Cousin Boslaf!"
"Always Cousin Boslaf! Yes, it is quite right, and will be placed on my gravestone. I have sworn that no human being should ever hear the tale, but I can bear it no longer. One man shall learn the crime we committed against mankind, that he may forgive us our sin in the name of mankind. I have always loved you, and to-day I saved your life, so you shall be the man."
He led Gotthold back to the bench.
"You have probably heard of the contest I had with my Cousin Adolf about Dollan?"
"Yes," replied Gotthold, "and have thought of it all very recently as I came to visit you, and in the depths of my heart praised the rare magnanimity with which you resigned the rich estate and beloved maiden to your cousin, after you learned that he was preferred by her. Emma von Dahlitz, Ulrica's confidante, brought you this message the evening before the decisive day; was it not so?"
"Yes," said Cousin Boslaf, "only the message was false, and she who brought it lied, out of love--as she afterwards wrote me on her death--bed a few years after, when I was in Sweden--out of love for me, whom she hoped to win herself. The unhappy girl had also confessed this to Ulrica, who, like me, had believed her lies, and that I had mocked and jeered at her, and said I would rather have a Lapland woman for my wife. Well, I had wooed no Laplander; but the unfortunate maiden had become Adolf's wife, and so, as Adolf's wife and the mother of two children, I found her when I returned. A third child--also a boy--was born a year after. The two older ones died in early youth; the third lived and remained the only child, and this boy was--my son!"
"Poor, poor man," murmured Gotthold.
"Ay indeed, poor man!" said old Boslaf, "for who is poorer than a man who cannot rejoice over his own child, dares not call his before all the world, what is his if anything in the world is. I dared not. Ulrica was proud; she would rather have died ten deaths than taken upon herself the shame of the violation of her marriage vow; and I was cowardly, cowardly out of love for her and him--my poor, good, unsuspicious Adolf, whom from childhood I had loved like a brother, who believed in me wholly and entirely, who would have asserted against the whole world that I was his best, most faithful friend. So a few terrible years passed away; Ulrica, exhausted by the fearful conflict between duty and love she dared not acknowledge, died; holding her cold hands, I was forced to swear that I would keep the secret. So I have been and still remain Cousin Boslaf to my child and grandchildren. They have given me a little higher place in their affections than an old servant whom people will not dismiss, tiresome as he often is; they have also let me talk when they were in a good humor; and if a child was born, old Cousin Boslaf was allowed to sit at the lower end of the table at the christening festival, or when one of them was borne to the churchyard in Rammin he was suffered to ride in the last coach, if there was a vacant seat. I have borne it all: bitternesses without number or measure; I have believed that by humility, by love towards others, I might atone for the crime I had committed against my own flesh and blood; but the curse has not been removed from me: 'I have never yet seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.' I have been no righteous man; my seed will be forced to beg their bread; I have grown so old only that I might live to see it."
"Never, never!" exclaimed Gotthold starting up; "never!"