"This unlooked for offer took us by surprise. The blissful feeling that we had suddenly, unexpectedly, found a new home struggled with an innate proud reluctance to accept a benefit for which we could make no return save our boundless gratitude.--We wavered for an instant and knew not what reply to make; but when Miriam grasping our hands with tearful eye and trembling voice implored us not to go away, to stay with her father--it seemed to us as if no opposition could be thought of; we stayed.
"Baruch Süss treated us ever with fatherly kindness, and we always succeeded in preserving his favour. Our late father had already initiated us in the study of God's word, and so it came to pass, that in spite of our youth we had soon made rapid progress. In the house of Süss we had now full leisure to indulge in our wonted occupations. All our wants were cared for in the kindest manner, and we soon felt as much at home as in the house of our parents--Baruch Süss was besides so good as to let us be instructed in those sciences, of which our father in the tenderest years of our boyhood had only been able to give us the first indications. His exertions in our favour had the best consequences. The examples of our forefathers continually hovered before our souls, and urged us to the greatest industry, to the highest sacrifices. We were soon proposed as a brilliant pattern to the Jewish youth, not only in Cologne, but in the whole Rhine-country--our names were every where mentioned with distinction, and Baruch Süss felt himself thereby richly rewarded. We lived happily and contentedly, and grew up.--I may now when all that is over say so--two splendid youths, equally well developed in mind and body, while Miriam and Perl blossomed into exquisitely lovely young women.
"I had arrived at the age, when the heart willingly opens to love. Miriam's infinite attractiveness, the enrapturing grace of her demeanour, her noble heart, her wonderfully penetrating mind, had made a powerful, ineffaceable impression upon me, an impression that soared to the height of love. I did not make the slightest attempt to conquer this noble passion. Miriam's most friendly kindest sympathy did not permit me to regard my bold hopes as unattainable, the less that Baruch Süss too, when we became young men, made no difference in his domestic economy, allowed us to make use of the intimate 'Thou' to his daughters, and recognised our deserts with almost fatherly affection.--His immense wealth, his influence, his position at the electoral court, made it moreover possible for him in the choice of his sons-in-law to neglect the petty considerations which so frequently stand in the way of the dearest wishes. I rocked myself in dreams of a happy glad future, but I avoided giving expression to these sweet dreams and my hopes remained for months a secret even to my dear and infinitely loved brother, to my brother whom in fact I loved more than myself! At length it seemed to me treachery against my fraternal affection, if I should any longer preserve silence with respect to a feeling that struck daily deeper root in my soul. We occupied a room in common, and in the dusk of a fading summer's day I opened my heart to him. I held my arms twined about his neck, and leant my head on his cheeks. It seemed to me, as if he suddenly shivered and began to tremble; but I convinced myself that it was a delusion, and as he gazed for a long while fixedly before him, I thought, that liveliest sympathy for me had plunged him into a deep reverie. I sought to read his features, but the increasing darkness made this impossible. 'Art thou then convinced that Miriam loves thee?' he enquired at length in a dull voice. I had often put the same question to myself, and ever given it an answer favourable to myself, and Miriam's behaviour justified me in doing so; but I forgot that she behaved exactly in the same way to my brother, and it was only the later unfavourable turn, which this connection, that at first caused me so much happiness, took, which directed my attention to that fact, without however my being ever able to fully make out the real state of the case: and even to this day, when manifold experiences have increased my knowledge of human nature, I cannot say for certain whether Miriam then loved me or my brother, or whether her virgin heart hovered in anxious timorousness between us. At that time I believed that I could answer my brother's question with an honest yes. The dejected silence into which my brother sunk anew, was equally misunderstood by me, I thought that I saw therein only an excessive fear lest Baruch Süss should refuse me his daughter's hand. I remained but a short time involved in this error; I was suddenly bitterly undeceived. Some days afterwards I awoke in the night and heard a loud and violent talking and weeping in my room. I sprung swiftly from my couch. It was a clear starlight night, and the pale moonlight fell just upon my brother's bed--he, as was often the case with him, was talking in his dreams. The sorrow, that was printed on the sleeper's face, the large tears, that welled from under his closed lashes and rolled over his pale cheeks, filled me for a moment with a strange pensive grief; but I soon smiled at my childish pity. I would wake him, scare away the evil dream, that enchained his mind--but as I was about to call him, there fell on my soul, as it were a quivering flash of lightning, followed by a roaring thunderclap, and the words which escaped slowly from his lips became on a sudden clear and transparent.--I listened with restrained breath.
"'I love my dear brother more than life,' he said, 'and he loves Miriam!... Hush, Hush! No one shall hear of it, but Thou, my God and Lord; Thou that beholdest my writhing, lacerated heart.... I will be silent, silent as the grave for ever.... not Miriam, not my brother, no man shall hear of it.... Oh! indeed I am glad, brother! dear brother, take Miriam for thy bride.... and, I can surely die! I will not trouble the joy of your wedding day, I will not weep.... No! I will be glad and laugh at your happiness, will laugh so right heartily, as on my brother's day of rejoicing, on the wedding day of him whom I most ardently love.... Oh, mine is no forced laugh, I laugh so truly from my whole heart; see--ha, ha, ha!...'
"But my brother did not laugh, but sobbed convulsively. My heart contracted frightfully, an indescribable, almost physically painful grief thrilled through me--I could not at first speak for maddening sorrow, but then cried aloud, casting myself upon the bed of my sleeping brother: 'no, dear one, no, thou shalt not give her up.... Miriam shall be thine.... thine, thine, for ever.'
"My brother awoke.--What I said, showed him clearly, that I was acquainted with his heart's secret. I lay upon his breast sobbing aloud.
"'A woman, dear brother!' he began at length with trembling voice vainly striving for composure--'a woman, though it were the glorious Miriam, shall not divide our hearts. Thee only I possessed in the wide world, thou wert my all, brother! Dost yet remember, how thou, thyself sick and weary, didst carry me in thy arms, when on our journey to the mother's grave I had wounded my foot? Dost yet remember, how thou didst watch at my sick-bed for three weeks together, and didst scarcely get any sleep? Dost yet remember, how our dying father exhorted us to love one another? Dost yet remember, how we renewed the covenant at our mother's grave?--And do you think that I, that I have forgotten all that, all that? No, brother: take thou Miriam to wife.... be happy!
"A noble strife arose between us. Each of us wished to give up with bleeding heart, and neither would accept the sacrifice offered by fraternal love.--The most curious, the strangest ideas, such as could only be born of so desperate a situation, danced in rapid succession before us.--Lot, Miriam herself should decide; but they were rejected as fast as entertained. At last a manly resolution the fruit of a long painful struggle ripened in us: we would both give her up. Neither of us should possess Miriam, and our love should remain a secret for ever. In our mutual passionate brotherly love we determined to forget the infinite sorrow that filled us.--
"We wished, we were bound to leave the house at daybreak, to which the mightiest ties enchained us. On the next day we stood pale, confused, with tears in our eyes before our friend Süss who had loved us as a father, and declared to him with hesitating voice our suddenly formed resolution of leaving his house, of proceeding farther on our journey. Süss was alarmed, he glared at us speechlessly, our fixed purpose seemed to have overthrown one of his favourite schemes. He vainly endeavoured to detain us, fruitlessly enquired the reason that had caused us to take a step so unexpected. 'Stay with me, I have good designs for you....' repeated Süss over and over again sadly, and when he saw how immovably we remained true to our purpose, he said at length painfully subduing his pride: 'Stay with me, be my sons.... I have only daughters, two lovely glorious daughters.... but I wish also to have two sons.... Will you not be my sons? My daughters, I have good ground for thinking so, are affectionately disposed towards you....' Süss said no more, his parental pride struggled with his parental love.--To us it was clear that Süss had intended to make choice of us as his sons-in-law, and that his daughters had fully shared the wish. I and my brother, as twins usually are, were almost exactly like one another, for which of us would Miriam have decided? A painful torturing pause ensued. Süss could not divine the real reason, why we who had entered his house as poor orphan boys, despised his exquisitely graceful daughters, the loveliest, wealthiest, noblest maidens among the German Jews. We, my brother and I, needed all the strength of our manhood, not to succumb to the unutterable pain of despair. One of us must of necessity be standing close to that hotly desired aim, that we both, each with the fullest force of his will, were striving to attain--and now to be obliged to draw back, to be obliged to draw back in silence, and by so doing to inflict an injury perhaps mortal on him whom we loved beyond measure--that thought annihilated us.
"Süss, wounded in the most sensitive place of his heart, in his pride as a father, was profoundly mortified. 'I cannot and must not detain you any longer,' he said with bitter grief.... 'Go!... may you never repent having thus departed.' Then he stepped hastily to the door and said with an accent that rent our hearts: 'Oh, would that you had never crossed the threshold of my house!...'