"'He did. The shoemaker of Corlitz, Jacob Boehm.'
"We were here interrupted by the arrival of Vrau Swartz, whom I could scarcely keep from throwing herself on her son and kissing him. This woman adores her first-born, and therefore may her sins be remitted. She spoke, but Gottlieb did not hear her; and I alone was able to persuade him to go to bed, where, I was told, he slept quietly. He knew nothing of what had happened, although his strange disease and the alarm are yet talked of at Spandau.
"I was then in my cell, after having enjoyed a few hours of painful and agitated half liberty. On such terms I do not wish to go out again. Yet I might, perchance, have escaped. I will think of nothing else, now that I am in the power of a wretch who menaces me with dangers worse than death and worse than eternal torment. I will now think seriously of it, and who knows but that I may succeed? Oh! God, protect me!"
"May 5.—Since the occurrence of the events I have described, I have lived calmly, and have learned to think my days of repose days of happiness, and to thank God for them, as in prosperity we thank him for years which roll by without disaster. It is indisputable that, to leave the apathy of ordinary life aside, it is necessary to have known misfortune. I reproach myself with having suffered so many of my childhood's days to pass by unmarked, without returning thanks to the Providence which bestowed them on me. I did not say then that I was undeserving, and therefore it is beyond a doubt, that I merit the evils which oppress me.
"I have not seen the odious recruiting officer since. He is now more feared by me than he was on the banks of the Moldau, when I took him for a child-devouring ogre. Now I look on him as a yet more odious and abominable persecutor: when I think of the revolting pretence of the wretch, of the power he exerts around me, of the ease with which he can come at night to my cell, without those servile Swartzes having even a wish to protect me from him, I feel ready to die in despair. I look at the pitiless bars which prevent me from throwing myself from the window. I cannot procure poison, and have no weapon to open his heart. Yet I have something to fill me with hope and confidence, and will not suffer myself to be intimidated. In the first place, Swartz does not love the adjutant, who would have a monopoly of air, sunlight, bread, and other items of prison food. Besides, the Swartzes, especially the woman, begin to conceive a liking for me on account of poor Gottlieb, and the healthful influence which they say I exert on his mind. Were I menaced, they would not perhaps come to my aid; but were this seriously the case, they would perhaps enable me to appeal to the commandant. He, the only time I saw him, appeared mild and humane. Gottlieb besides, would be glad to do me a favor, and without making any explanation I have already concerted matters with him. He is ready to take a letter which I have prepared. I hesitate, however, to ask for aid before I am really in danger; for if my enemy cease to torment me, he might treat as a jest a declaration I was prudish enough to treat as serious. Let that be as it may, I sleep with but one eye, and am training my physical powers for a fearful contest if it should be necessary. I move my furniture, I pull against the iron bars of the window, and harden my hands by knocking against the walls. Anyone who saw me thus engaged, would think me mad or desperate. I practise, however, with the greatest sang froid, and have learned that my physical power is far greater than I had supposed. In the security of ordinary life, we do not inquire into, but disregard, our means of defence. As I feel strong, I become brave, and my confidence in God increases with my efforts to protect myself. I often remember the beautiful verses Porpora told me he read on the walls of a dungeon of the inquisition at Venice."
'Di che mi fido, mi guarda Iddio!
Di che non mi fido mi guardero Io.'
"More fortunate than the wretch who traced the words of that sad prayer, I can at least confide in the chastity and devotion of poor Gottlieb. His attacks of somnambulism have not reappeared; his mother, too watches him carefully. During the day, he talks to me in my room, for since I saw Mayer I have not seen the esplanade.
"Gottlieb has explained his religious ideas to me. They are beautiful, though often whimsical, and I wish to read Boehm's book—for he is a disciple of his, certainly—to know what he has added from his own mind to the theological cordwainer. He lent me this precious book, and at my own peril and risk I became immersed in it. I can not understand how this book disturbed the balance of the simple mind which looked at the symbols of a mystic—himself sometimes mad—as literal. I do not flatter myself that I can thoroughly understand and explain them; but I think I catch a glimpse of lofty religious divination, and the inspiration of generous poetry. What struck me most is his theory about the devil: 'In the battle with Lucifer, God did not destroy him. See you not the reason, blind man? God fought against God, one portion of divinity striving against the other. I remember that Albert explained, almost in the same way, the earthly and transitory reign of the spirit of evil, and that the chaplain of Riesenberg listened to him with horror, and treated his idea as pure manicheism. Albert said that Christianity was a purer and more complete manicheism than his faith; that it was more superstitious, as it recognised the perpetuity of the principle of evil, while his system recognised the restoration of the spirit of evil, that is to say its conversion and reconciliation. In Albert's opinion, evil was but error, and the divine light some day would dissipate it. I own, my friends, even though I seem heretical, that the idea of its being Satan's doom everlastingly to excite evil, to love it, and to close his eyes to the truth, seems, and always has seemed impious to me."
"Boehm seems to me to look for a millenium—that is to say, he is a believer in the resurrection of the just, and thinks they will sojourn with him in a new world, formed from the dissolution of this, during a thousand years of cloudless happiness and wisdom. Then there will be the complete union of souls with God, and the recompense of eternity, far more complete than those of the millenium. I often remember having heard Count Albert explain this symbol, as he told the stormy history of old Bohemia, and of his beloved Taborites, who were embued with faith renewed from the early days of Christianity. Albert had a less material faith in all this, and did not pronounce on the duration of the resurrection, or the precise age of the future world. He had, however, a presentiment and a prophetic view of the speedy dissolution of human society, which was to give place to an era of sublime renovation. Albert did not doubt that his soul, on leaving the temporary prison of death, would begin here below a series of existences, and would contemplate this providential reward, and see those days which are at once so terrible and so magnificent, and which have been promised to the human race. This noble faith seemed monstrous to all orthodox persons at Riesenberg, and took possession of me after having at first seemed strange. Yet it is a faith of all nations and all days. In spite of the efforts of the Roman Church to stifle it—or rather, in spite of its being unable to purify itself of the material and superstitious, I see it has filled many really pious souls with enthusiasm. They tell me it was the faith of great saints. I yield myself to it therefore without restraint and without fear, being sure any idea adopted by Albert must be a grand one. It also smiles on me, and sheds celestial poetry on the idea of death and the sufferings which beyond doubt are coming to a close. Jacob Boehm pleases me. His disciple who sits in the dirty kitchen, busy with sublime reveries and heavenly visions, while his parents become petrified, trade, and grow brutal, seems in character pure and touching to me, with this book which he knows by heart, but does not understand, although he has commenced to model his life after his master's. Infirm in body and mind—ingenuous, candid, and with angelic morals, poor Gottlieb, destined beyond doubt to be crushed by falling from some rampart, in your imaginary flight across the skies, or to sink under premature disease—you will have passed from earth like an unknown saint, like an exiled angel, ignorant of evil, without having known happiness, without even having felt the sun that warms the earth, so wrapped were you in the contemplation of the mystic sun which burns in your mind. I, who alone have discovered the secret of your meditations—I, who also comprehend the ideal beautiful, and had power to search for and realize it, will die in the flower of my youth, without having acted or lived. In the nucleus of these walls which shut in and devour us, are poor little plants which the wind crushes and the sun never shines on. They dry up without flourishing or fructifying; yet they seem to revive. But they are the seeds which the wind brings to the same places, and which seek to live on the wreck of the old. Thus captives vegetate!—thus prisons are peopled!
"Is it not strange that I am here, with an ecstatic being of an order inferior to Albert, but, like him, attached to a secret religion, to a faith which is ridiculed, contemned, and despised! Gottlieb tells me there are many other Boehmists in this country, that many cordwainers openly confess his faith, and that the foundation of his doctrine is implanted for all time in the popular mind, by many unknown philosophers who of old excited Bohemia, and who now nurse a secret fire throughout Germany. I remember the ardent Hussite cordwainers, whose bold declarations and daring deeds in John Ziska's time, Albert mentioned to me. The very name of Jacob Boehm attests this glorious origin. I cannot tell what passes in the contemplative brain of patient Germany, my brilliant and dissipated life making such an examination impossible. Were Gottlieb and Zdenko, however, the last disciples of the mysterious religion which Albert preserved as a precious talisman, I am still sure that faith is mine, inasmuch as it proclaims the future equality of all men and the coming manifestation of the justice and goodness of God on earth! Ah, yes! I must believe in this kingdom, which God declared to man through Christ! I must hope for the overturning of these iniquitous monarchies, of those impure societies, that when I see myself here, I may not lose faith in Providence!"