To render his situation still more pitiable, he became conscious that he loved another. Madame Röckel’s youngest daughter—a sweet innocent girl of eighteen—had conceived a passion for the young tragedian, which her artless nature had but ill concealed. Franz read it in her eyes, in her tones, in her confusion; and reading it, he also read in his own heart that her passion was returned.
He left Berlin in two days after the discovery, with bitter curses on his youthful error, which had yoked him to a woman he could no longer love, and which had shut him for ever from the love of another.
Then, indeed, the thought of a divorce rose constantly before him; but he wrestled with the temptation, and subdued it. He resolved to bear his fate. His only hope was that death might interpose to set him free!
CHAPTER VI.
If in these brief sentences I have indicated the misery of Franz’s condition—the depth of the shadows which accompanied the lustre of his success—if I have truly presented the main outlines of his domestic history, the reader will imagine Franz’s feelings when a hand as friendly as that of death did interfere to set him free.
Clara ran away with the low comedian of the troop!
She had worn away in tears and fretfulness all the affection she once had felt for Franz, and having inspired a sort of passion in the breast of this comedian, lent a willing ear to his romantic proposal of an elopement. To a woman of her age an elopement was irresistible!
She fled, and left Franz at liberty.
The very day on which Franz received this intelligence he had to perform in Kotzebue’s Menschenhass und Reue (our “Stranger.”) He went to the theatre extremely agitated. Great as was his delight at being released from his wife, and released by no act of his own—he could not think without a shudder upon the probable fate which awaited her; and a remembrance of his former love and happiness with her returned to make him sad.
It happened that old Schoenlein had that night been seized with a sudden impulse to see his son act, and had gone privately into the parterre. It was the first time he saw his son acting—for on that Dresden night he saw nothing—a mist was before his eyes. He was now sufficiently calm to be critical.