Gabriel gave an involuntary shudder. The words of the honest armourer accorded so exactly with Bubna's farewell.--
"Martin!" he said, after he had recovered his self-possession, "your love to me makes you take a gloomy view of everything.... I cannot set off today, I must stay here--my resolution is immovable!"
Martin bowed himself over the hand, which Gabriel extended to him, and wetted it with his tears.
"My resolve is unshakeable!" repeated Gabriel once more when he was alone.... this was the last word that he had addressed to Blume.... He paced the room with long strides. Physical exhaustion, unusual but easily to be accounted for, increased his intense mental excitement. His stirring life had been always full of manifold vicissitudes, but to-day in the short space of a few hours an infinity of events had been compressed. Once awakened and kept alive by suggestion, from many quarters, he could not quite banish from his soul the thought that he should die to-day this very day. He had often been near to death, the enemies' balls had often whistled about him, hostile daggers had threatened him, he might often before have fallen, and unavenged, and without having accomplished his design:--But he had never been so near it--on the faintest doubt of the success of his plan he suffered the tortures, which legend attributes to Tantalus: only more woeful.... If he should die to-day without having revenged himself, if he should die, behind him a desolate, empty, aimless existence, before him an unknown future, then there must be a Providence, then he must have ruined more than one human life, more than one existence.--He struggled with the whole strength of his powerful intellect against the thought that would keep rising from the depths of his soul. But the thought was intangible, irrefutable. He might assure himself thousands of times, that there was no ground for these terrors, but for the very reason that he found no sensible foundation for his apprehensions, this inexplicable coincidence of his own sensations with that of his friend Bubna, of his devoted Martin, caused him a feeling of uneasy astonishment.--But his strong mind gradually with many a struggle composed itself. He could not in truth annihilate the painful thought, but he overcame it.
"Blume's fate, her husband's life is still in my hands," he said to himself. "The immediate future may cause an alteration in our relative positions.... the grey dawn of to-morrow must not find me in Prague.... I do not know whether I shall ever see Blume again--the favourable moment for revenge must be made use of!"
One hour later Gabriel was about to step out of the back-door of his house. He was again in the dress of a student, but he had this time thrown a broad cloak about him.
"What do you want, Martin?" he enquired in surprise, as he saw the armourer, who caught him hurriedly by the arm.
"Sir," cried he, "do not enter the Jews' quarter, fly, quit the silly passion.... he entreated; what signify Jewish women to you?... do not go into the Jews' town, they are well affected to the Emperor there."
"Martin! you mean well ... but I cannot follow your advice--See," he unfolded his cloak, under which flashed a scabbard and three pistols, "I am armed, there is nothing to be afraid of. Leave me, you know me, you are aware that my resolution is immovable.--Remember, to-morrow early at the Schweinsthor."
Gabriel stepped out and hastened to the Jews' street. Martin gazed after him as long as he was in sight, then closed the postern and murmured with a sigh: "surely I shall never see him again."