The Lost Manuscript: A Novel

by Gustav Freytag

"That will not do," replied Gabriel. "What would the son-in-law's people over the way say to it?"

"The devil!" exclaimed Mr. Hummel, and turned away.

Yes, Spitehahn had disappeared from the world. Since that hour, when in the dim grey of the morning he had wound round him the golden dress of the deceased Bachhuber like a ruff, he had disappeared. No inquiries and no offers of reward had enabled Mr. Hummel to obtain a trace of him. In vain were the shepherds and laborers of the neighborhood, and even the magistrates of Rossau, set in movement--he had vanished like a spirit. The place on the steps remained empty; the blank which he had left behind in society was filled by a younger race of dogs in Park Street; the neighborhood in every walk along the street felt a satisfaction which they had long been deprived of; the cigar dealer again placed his stand near Mr. Hummel's garden; and the young ladies in white dresses, who went to the Park, gradually gave up the custom of turning away from Mr. Hummel's house, and going over to the straw side. The memory of Spitehahn passed away without regret from any; only with the old inmates of the street the remembrance of him remained as a dark tradition. Gabriel alone thought of the lost one evenings when he saved the bones for miscellaneous dogs of the neighborhood. But he did not wonder at the disappearance of the animal: he had long known that something mysterious must sometime or other happen to him.

There came a confirmation of this view, which furnished food for thought for the rest of Gabriel's life; for when, in the following autumn, he again went in company with his master and mistress to visit the Manorhouse of Bielstein, directly upon his arrival he begged permission to have an afternoon's holiday, and, as he often did now, walked alone with his thoughts. He went in the wood, far past the ranger's lodge, amongst large mossy beech-trees, ferns, and bilberries. It was evening, and a grey twilight overtook the wanderer; he was uncertain of his direction, and, somewhat uneasy, sought the road to the house. Thunder rolled in the distance, and sometimes a bright flash of lightning passed over the heavens, and for a moment lighted up the trunks of the trees and the mossy ground. Amid a bright flash he saw himself suddenly on a cross-road; he started back, for a few steps from him a great dark figure was moving across the path, with a broad-brimmed felt hat on his head and a weapon on his shoulder; it glided by noiselessly and without greeting. Gabriel stood astonished; again a flash, and along the same road ran two dogs, a black and a red cur, with huge heads and bristly hair: suddenly the red one stopped and turned towards Gabriel, who saw at the back of the dog a tuft which it wagged. The next moment there was profound darkness, and Gabriel heard at his feet a slight whimpering, and it appeared to him as if something licked his boot. Another slight noise, and then all was still.

The people on the estate maintain that it was a poacher, or the great deer-stealer from the other side of the frontier; but Gabriel knew who the night-hunter was, and what the dog was. He who had before sent the dog to Hummel's house, without money and without name, had also called him away. The hound now barked again in the night, when the storm blew like a hunting-horn, when the clouds flew under the moon, and the trees bent their heads, groaning, to the earth. Then he ran over the hills from Rossau, through the grounds of Bielstein; he howled, and the moon laughed mockingly down on the place in which Tobias Bachhuber had deposited his treasures, and among them the cover of the lost manuscript.

But if no observer could be in doubt as to the fate of the dog, far more uncertain is the judgment of the present day concerning another figure which hovers about the grotto.

What can thy fate be, unfortunate Brother Tobias Bachhuber? Thy conduct towards the manuscript we have been seeking transcends everything one could have expected of a Tobias. It is much to be feared that thy disregard of the highest interests of mankind may have injured thy social position in the other world. Grievous doubts arise, Bachhuber, as to thy heavenly happiness: for the wrong that thou hast done to us would have drawn tears from an angel. To us mortals it is impossible to think of thee with the confidence which thy true-hearted words would impress upon us: hæc omnia deposui,--I have deposited all this. That was an untruth, Bachhuber, and the wounds of deceived confidence will always bleed afresh.

Answer my question, Tobias--what views didst thou hold of the unity of the human race? of the bonds of union binding the souls of men of past ages with the souls of men of the present? or of that stupendous net-work, humanity, in which thou wert a mesh? Thy views were pitiable, indeed. Thou didst stuff the great manuscript, the hope of our century, into a bag and thou didst rip out the text when thou foundest the bag too full, and didst carefully preserve the covers for later generations! For shame, thrice for shame!

And yet, withal, thou didst ever hover restlessly about the cave of the forest, and since Swedish times didst bustle about unceasingly in the rooms of the old house!

Why didst thou do that, Tobias, silly monk? Is't possible that thou hadst something in store, that thou wast guarding something, for the happiness of those who came after thee, that thou wert, after all, laboring for the unity of mankind that we said thou hadst no conception of?