"I trusted his promise, but at the next moment he sprung upon me with the fury and agility of a tiger, fastened his sharp teeth upon my naked breast, and made most desperate efforts to strangle me. I screamed aloud for excess of pain, and seized him, in obedience to a dim instinct of self-preservation, by the throat.... a violent wrench of my sinewy wrist--and my brother with a hollow muttering and distorted visage sunk lifeless down! I stood for an instant in despair, motionless, then threw myself, mad with grief, upon the ground and endeavoured to recall him to life. My exertions were ineffectual!
"I recovered my presence of mind with astonishing rapidity, and it was again the thought of thee, my dear daughter! which drew me out of the wild storm of despair.... I opened the window, and cried out aloud to the star-spangled heaven: 'Lord of the world: Thou hast seen it, Thy paternal eye was watching.... I am not guilty of his death, I am no Cain, my hand did not shed this blood!'"
Gabriel, exhausted, almost unconscious, ceased reading, and threw the fateful writing far away from him.... The superhuman strength, with which he had hitherto attentively and greedily devoured the faded characters, gave way. The hope of obtaining information about his father, of searching him out, of being able to fold him to his beating, bursting heart, had pervaded him with the wildest, most blissful rapture--and now, now all these hopes were scattered, annihilated; the very name of his father, which, as if intentionally, was not once mentioned in the manuscript, remained unknown to him.--The more beautiful nobler aim of his life continued to be unattainable by him. What mattered to him the farther contents of the manuscript? Of what importance to him was it to learn, how Rabbi Mosche in that same night had taken flight with his daughter, to escape the avenging hands of human justice? Of what importance was it to him to learn, how Reb Carpel Sachs had received the old friend of his youth with warm affection? Of what importance was it to him to learn, how Reb Mosche, as attendant in the Old-Synagogue had led a peaceful, contemplative life, how he embraced the firm resolution, to give the hand of his daughter to a man who like himself, like his deceased father, would accept the modest office of attendant in the Old-Synagogue, where far from the busy tumult of the world he could peacefully live for his faith, for his duties: calm and isolated, like his father, like himself, might quietly close a storm tossed life.... What did all this and more signify to Gabriel? Had he not learnt that his father was dead, lost to him for ever--did he not know, that the hot unstilled longing of his soul must remain for ever and ever ungratified, were not the thousand threads, with which his heart hung to the sweetest hope of his life, suddenly painfully snapped!... Gabriel read no further. He sat for a while motionless in his chair. Language has no power to express the tempest of emotion, that whirled through his breast, and it needs the boldest flight of imagination, to picture it even in faint colour to oneself.
"That hope then is vanished!" he said at last after long silence, pressing his hand convulsively on his heart, "that hope is vanished!... there remains to me then but one, the only aim of my life. Vengeance ... Mannsfield is still at Pilsen, Blume's destiny is yet in my hands!... I thank thee, chance, thou hast wonderfully led me, thou hast solved the torturing doubt in the most critical moment.... vengeance is all that is left to me--my resolution continues immoveable!"
The strokes of the Rathhaus clock proclaimed, that it wanted but two hours to midnight. About this time the gates of the Jews-town were shut. Gabriel got up hastily, armed and enveloped himself in his cloak, then passed his hand slowly over his lofty forehead white as marble, as though violently to compress every new risen thought, and stepped to the door. On the threshold he paused once more plunged in the overflowing tide of thought, and cast a glance over the room that he was leaving for ever. It seemed, as if he could not after all tear himself away so easily from the dwelling, in which his grandfather had ended a life fruitful in stirring incidents, where his father had passed the lovely period of innocent youth.--All at once he manned himself, and hastened with flying steps to the Jews-town.--In the short distance there he met a man, with his cloak drawn close over his face; it was Michoel Glogau; but both were too busied with their own thoughts, and neither remarked the other.
Gabriel arrived just in time; immediately after his entrance the gates of the Jews' quarter were closed.
VI.
The winter of the year 1620 had set in betimes, it was a raw cold night. The sky was hidden by a grey veil of clouds, dissipated at one moment by the breath of the icy north wind, at another as rapidly re-condensed. The roofs were covered with deep snow, the ground was frozen hard and crunched under footsteps. It had already become quiet, the numerous vendors, who cheapened their wares in open street till a late hour, and whose candles and small lamps gave a singularly friendly aspect to the Jews-town, had disappeared, the streets were almost empty, and only here and there a solitary passenger close wrapped in his cloak was seen hastening home, or to the lecture-room.
Gabriel stepped slowly, through the street, stopping almost every minute. He had experienced in his passion-tossed life much mental anguish. Since the day, when he had stood in despair at his mother's dying bed, since the day when Blume had contumeliously rejected his warm earnest and chaste young love, his whole life had been full of pain and torment--and yet it appeared to him, as if he had never been so unhappy, never so unutterably wretched, as now. His future confronted him more fearful and horrible than ever. The fortune of war, which had hitherto fastened itself to his, to his friend Mannsfield's banners, seemed to have vanished with Frederick's overthrow on this day.... The audacious confidence with which he had made himself irresponsible for his abjuration of everything which he had formerly considered dear and sacred had been dissipated by Michoel's ardent words, which had struck him with the full overpowering force of truth at the most critical hour.... His only hope, to discover his father, to press him to his heart, to reconcile himself to him, to his destiny, perhaps to God.... the audacious hope, which had often raised him from the bottomless pit of despair; this one, sweet hope, which had ever, even when he dared not allow it to himself, glimmered in his soul--was dissipated, was annihilated!
In truth it was the crushing intelligence of his father's early death, which now bowed him down under a burden of infinite sorrow, and almost effaced every earlier impression.... His father had never rejected him, as he had so often in moments of wild excitement feared.... His father had perhaps departed out of this life, without any presentiment that his child would one day be dispairingly searching a trace of his path.... And this father he had never known, and should never, never behold, this father whom he had therefore only so madly hated, because he would have so gladly loved him with the whole gigantic power of his soul!