"From the faith of my fathers!" re-echoed Gabriel; "you choose your words well, each is a poisoned arrow and barbed--have I then forsaken the faith of my fathers? Do I forsooth know my father? For ten years have I sought him, and thee," he continued thoughtfully, "thee have I found,--shall I ever discover him, whom perhaps--and supposing I did find him," said Gabriel after a long silence, inwardly communing, and rather as addressing himself, "would the voice of nature, as silly men declare, conquer? Full of infinite love should I fling myself into my father's arms, or should I be possessed with an unspeakable hatred against the faithless traitor, who was perhaps wantoning in luxury, when his child, loaded with insult and scorn, was cast out from the threshold of that house that he had for twenty years called home! If he proves such a man, if he has forgotten me, if he has never been mindful of the unhappy one whom to his everlasting misery he tossed out into the wide desolate world; if he proves like the mother, who even on her death-bed betrayed her child, if he should prove such, and I do find him, Blume: I shall gloriously conclude my wretched existence with a parricide."
Blume shuddered. Gabriel threw himself into a chair and hid his face with both hands.
"But if it is not so, supposing it otherwise," he began again after a long pause, in the course of which the foaming billows of his wrath had sunk, "if the apparition in my youth was a truth and no deception, if his tears did indeed once bedew the face of his child, if my father has been pining in infinite sorrow for his long lost son, if his heart has been sighing after me with the same strange emotion as sometimes in hours of quiet rises convulsively in the depths of my soul, if racked by repentance and the stings of conscience he has been seeking me mad with grief.... if I should find him thus, though he were the meanest on earth, the wretchedest beggar to whom one flings a morsel of bread--and stood before me in that condition--Blume! I have often declared, and now repeat, by my troth, and knightly honour! I should fold him lovingly in my arms.... and though it were the last moment of my life, my last breath--my last, yea dying breath should be a loud Hallelujah."
Gabriel stopped suddenly, Blume too had for some time been listening. Out of the bushes in a distant corner of the graveyard, on the gusts of a favouring wind, sounds of lamentation came born to the ears of both of them. Each for a time had accepted what was heard as a deception to be accounted for by the fearful excitement of the moment; but the sounds, at first dying away with a hollow echo, came nearer:
"My Son, my Son;" it rung now clearer and clearer in their ears, "my much loved only child--where art thou? Come to me, thou dear one.... thou wert born in sin, but I love thee in spite of all! for in truth you are my only son! Where can I find thee? could I find thee in heaven, I would seek thee there; could I find thee far over the sea, I would seek thee there.--Where art thou, thou that wert conceived in sin, thou that art so near to my heart? approach me and let us crave mercy at my father's grave, perhaps God will have compassion on me, will pardon me!... Oh! if my son but lives and I may see him again: then, then would I die!..."
The clock on a neighbouring tower tolled midnight, a wind sprung up, and sighed over the wide desolate space of the graveyard.... the clang of the clock, the rustling of the wind drowned the words which again died away in the distance. Gabriel had become deadly pale. He stepped to the window, and gazed for a long while down: but saw nothing. "It was an illusion," he said softly, quickly recovering himself by a wonderful mental effort--"my sharp glance detects nothing in the wide, and snow-covered space--and the dead have no voice."
Blume shivered, she did not dare announce that she too had heard the ghostly cry from the graveyard. Gabriel stared fixedly before him, sunk in gloomy brooding. Blume tried to read his soul. She had never seen him since that fateful day of the feast of atonement. He, who had once loved her, who had once clung with the perfect fresh strength of youth to his faith, to humanity, to his people, to justice, had become a changed man. Branded by holy scripture, which human wisdom can never quite interpret, betrayed by his mother whom he idolized, driven from her presence, cast forth from the society of his brethren--his soul was filled with hate. But even his hate she was unable to fathom. When he had entered, she feared that he would rob her of her child, that he would slay herself--that he would not do so, was now clear--but she dared not yet be tranquil, for he had declared that he hated her, that he would be revenged upon her. In pitiful sorrow she gazed motionless at his lips, at every movement of which her blood again ran cold: though his silence seemed to her yet more horrible. Once more one of those long and oft-recurring pauses had intervened, that seemed to Blume to last an eternity. Her unspeakable oppression was intensified by the profound impression caused by the singular incident that had just occurred, by astonishment at Gabriel who seemed by force of will to have soon banished it from his soul.
"Gabriel," implored Blume, "I pray thee, speak, break this weird silence, it is awful! say what thou wilt, go on with your story."
"Dost thou consider Blume! thy silence was once awful to me too.... once thou hadest no word of pity, no look of compassion for a poor innocent martyr, and I languished for a word of love.--Had my grandfather then still continued to live at Cologne perhaps.... I do not know, but perhaps he, he alone, would have taken me to his arms. But the fearful tidings, that branded his daughter, his grandson, gave his name a prey to the scornful, and blighted his dearest hopes, threw the old man on a bed of death. I arrived two days after his funeral at Cologne. Every one shunned me, my misfortune was known to all my brethren in the faith.
"I took possession, as heir, of my grandfather's immense property. I was no longer attached by any tie to this life, all that I had loved, I was constrained to hate, that which had once been true and holy to me, now seemed to me lying and false, I was the unhappiest man on earth! I broke with my whole past life, I would have none of it live on within me, except the remembrance of my unmerited humiliation, that fanned the hot flame of my revenge with undiminished fury.... I sought by some overt act to prove that I had become a changed man. In the cathedral at Aix-la-chapelle I abjured the old faith, and swore enmity in my heart against all those that clave to it.... As I came out of the church a crowd of people had assembled to gape at the new convert. I did not lift my eyes; but felt that the odious looks of all were fixed upon me. I hurried through the press, and sought to gain a side street that led to my dwelling. The crowd that accompanied me fell off one by one, and at last I heard the step of but one solitary person behind me, who followed me obstinately to the door of my house. I did not look round, but as I was about to step into the house, I felt myself seized by the cloak. 'What do you want?' I asked of the importunate fellow, a beggar in the dress of a poor Jew. 'Nothing,' replied he, with the wandering gaze of madness, 'nothing, except to tell you, that you have done wrong.... Thou hast forsaken thy Father in heaven.... and a good child seeks his father, even though he has prepared sorrow for him.... There is no greater grief than when father and son seek and cannot find one another!...' The maniac ran quickly away: but his words, burnt into my soul like kindled sparks.--I did not know my father! my mother had died without naming his name.--The high reputation for virtue which she had enjoyed during her lifetime, had not permitted the faintest doubt to rest upon her, and even if I had ventured to induce my brethren to make any revelations, my inquiries would have been vain. I had as yet been too stunned to think of my unknown father; but now, with the wild thirst for vengeance on you all, was associated a feeling, so singular, so wonderful, that I can never describe it. At one moment I was inflamed with unutterable hate against the unknown author of my days, at another I felt myself more mildly disposed, and a profound longing took possession of my torn heart. At one moment I believed myself convinced that he had forgotten me, and revelled with undisturbed and cheerful mind in earthly happiness, while his son succumbed before a woeful affliction; at another I hoped that he, who had never betrayed me, who had never for years enforced his paternal authority, had omitted to do so by reason of his inextinguishable love for me. A tormenting, frequently rapid succession of emotions took powerful hold on my heart; but from that moment a desire was born within me to find my father, were it to demand fearful reckoning of him, or were it to fall reconciled into his fatherly arms!