There is something rather German than French in the strain of the early chapters of Un Héritage, but they are a mere prologue to the book, and are unheeded by the dramatist. After the death of his betrothed, Count Sigismund abandoned himself to the most passionate and despairing grief. He remained at Heidelberg with Michaële’s mother, who would not quit the spot where she had dwelt with her daughter. She did not long survive her bereavement. Sigismund followed her to the grave, and returned to Hildesheim, where he lived in complete retirement, avoiding intercourse with his neighbours. He would not be consoled, and lived alone with his sorrow. When this became calmer, he opened his piano and would have played the Tyrolese air he and his departed love had so often repeated. But in vain did he rack his memory and try every note of the instrument. The melody had fled, and would not return. It had departed with the soul of her from whom he had learned it. His long paroxysm of grief had utterly driven it from his recollection.
What does M. Sandeau now, but send his melancholy hero forth, a pilgrim over hill and dale, in quest of the lost melody so inextricably intertwined with the memory of her he had so tenderly and deeply loved. After innumerable efforts to seize the fugitive sounds, after bursts of impatience, anger, almost of frenzy, the enthusiastic Sigismund departed, wandering in search of an old song. The idea is fantastical; it may be deemed far-fetched; but it certainly is not unpoetical.
“He set out for the Tyrol; on the summit of the mountains, in the depths of the valleys, he listened to the songs of the shepherds: no voice repeated the air Michaële sung. After traversing Switzerland and Italy he returned to Germany, and his gentle, touching monomania then assumed a new form. He travelled on foot, like a poor student, listening to every fresh young voice that met his ear as he passed through the villages; in cities, on the public squares, when he saw a crowd gathered round a band of itinerant singers, he joined it, and stirred not from the place until the alfresco minstrels had exhausted their musical store. Whilst thus persisting in the pursuit of this Tyrolese air, which fled before him as did Ithaca from Ulysses, it will easily be understood that he paid little attention to the management of his estate. Before commencing his travels, which had lasted several years, he had installed in his castle two old cousins of his mother, Hedwige and Ulrica von Stolzenfels.”
Hereabouts M. Sandeau shelves sentiment and the pathetic, and strikes into a vein akin to satire, in which, as he showed us in Sacs et Parchemins, and some others of his books, he is by no means less happy. The two old Stolzenfels are a capital sketch. In the whole course of their lives, prolonged to a period it would be ungallant to guess at, they had had but one affection—for a scamp of a nephew, who had ruined them, but whom they still idolised, although hopeless of his conversion to better courses. For this handsome, reckless officer, whose innumerable follies were redeemed, in their partial eyes, by his good looks and prepossessing manners, they had emptied their purses, sold their diamonds, and left themselves with an income barely sufficient for their support. They would not have given a copper to a beggar; for Captain Frederick they would have stripped themselves of their last dollar, and have deemed themselves more than repaid by a visit from him in his fulldress of captain of hussars. When Sigismund offered them apartments in his castle, they gladly accepted them, at first merely as a comfortable home free of cost; but when they observed his absence of mind and his total neglect of his affairs, they formed other projects. By nature and habit haughty and sour to everybody but their beloved hussar, they forced themselves to be gentle and humble with Sigismund. Under pretence of watching over his interests, they gradually assumed the whole management of his house, and soon it might have been supposed that he was the guest and that they were his hostesses. When he set out upon his rambles, Frederick, who was in garrison in a neighbouring town, installed himself at the castle and disposed of everything as though it had been his patrimony, keeping horses, dogs, and huntsmen continually on their legs. The servants, accustomed to obey the two old ladies, and seeing that they obeyed their nephew, obeyed him likewise. Meanwhile Hedwige and Ulrica built castles in the air for their darling; or, it should rather be said, they grasped in imagination the one already built on the broad domain of Hildesheim. Sigismund, they were convinced, could not live long, leading the strange, wandering, unhappy life he did. Why should he not leave part of his property to Frederick? Why not all? How could it be better bestowed? The hussar, to do him justice, entered into none of their schemes. He drank Sigismund’s wine, thinned his preserves, knocked up his horses, and cared for little besides. When Sigismund came home for a few days, the captain made no change in his habits, and the count, for his part, in no way interfered with them.
To the infinite consternation of the old maids, there one day arrived at the castle a distant relative of Sigismund’s father, of whom they had heard nothing for many years, and whom they sincerely trusted had departed for a better world. Had a thunderbolt dropped into their aprons they could hardly have been more thunderstruck. Major Bildmann, who had always been rather a loose character, had just lost his last ducat at the gaming-table. In this extremity, Dorothy, his wife, could think of nothing better than to have recourse to Count Sigismund. She was careful not to speak to him of her husband’s irregularities, and concocted a little romance about faithless trustees and insolvent bankers, which Sigismund implicitly believed. He was touched by the tale of her misfortunes.
“My mother’s two cousins,” he said, after listening in silence, “occupy the right wing of the castle; come and install yourself with the major in the left wing. There will still be plenty of room for me.”
Dorothy took him at his word. A week afterwards she returned with Major Bildmann, and with little Isaac, an abominable brat whom she had forgotten to mention. This mattered not. Sigismund had again quitted the castle in pursuit of his chimera.
The consternation of a pair of magpies, disturbed in the plucking of a pigeon by the sudden swoop of a leash of sparrow-hawks, may give some idea of the feelings of Ulrica and Hedwige at this intrusion upon their territory. There was deadly hatred between the right wing and the left. When Sigismund returned home he did not observe this. The two maiden ladies certainly insinuated that the Bildmanns were no better than they should be; and the Bildmanns scrupled not to declare that the Stolzenfels were no great things; but Sigismund, whilst they spoke, was thinking of his Tyrolese air, and when they paused, he thanked them for having made his house the asylum of every domestic virtue.
Leaving the inmates of Hildesheim to their dissensions and illusions, and passing over a few chapters, we seek a contrast in an humble dwelling in Bavaria’s art-loving capital. It is the abode of Franz Müller, the musician, Edith his wife, and Spiegel their friend. Franz and Spiegel had been brought up together, and had passed the flower of their youth in poverty, working and hoping. Franz studied music, Spiegel was passionately fond of painting; art and friendship scared discouragement from their doors. For the space of three years they wandered on foot, knapsack on shoulder and staff in hand, through Germany and the Tyrol, stopping wherever the beauty of the country tempted them, and purveying, each in his own manner, for the wants of the community. Sometimes Spiegel painted a few portraits, at others Müller gave lessons in singing or on the piano; or when they arrived in a town on the eve of a great festival, he offered to play the church organ at the next day’s solemnity. Art and liberty was their motto. In the course of their wandering existence they visited the most beautiful valleys, the most picturesque mountains, opulent cities, splendid picture galleries, and amassed a treasure of reminiscences for future fireside conversation. They resolved never to marry, lest domestic cares should interfere with their enthusiastic pursuit of art. Spiegel kept his word, but Franz, in a little Tyrolese town, saw and loved Edith. In vain did the painter draw an alarming picture of the inconveniences of matrimony; Franz married, and thenceforward his friend deemed him lost to art. It was reserved for the gentle Edith to convince Spiegel of the contrary, and to tame his somewhat wild and vagabond nature. When first the newly-married pair settled at Munich, he seldom went to see them, but gradually his visits became more frequent, until one day, he hardly knew how, he found himself dwelling under their roof. In a small house Müller had taken, he had reserved a bedroom and studio for his friend. In that modest abode, situated outside Munich, between a front court whose walls disappeared under a drapery of vines and a little garden crowded with sweet flowers, happy years flew by. Happy, but not prosperous. At first Spiegel had painted pictures, with two or three of which he was tolerably satisfied, whilst Franz pronounced them masterpieces. But they found no purchasers, and the artist, once so ambitious, cheerfully resigned his hopes of fame, and gave drawing lessons. Müller had composed sonatas and a symphony; they were as unsuccessful as Spiegel’s pictures. Vanquished by the innumerable barriers that interpose between a poor and unknown musician and the public, he, too, submitted to give lessons. With strict economy they managed to live, but they laid by nothing; and Müller was often uneasy when he thought of the future, and of the two beautiful children Edith had born him.
“One evening, during Spiegel’s absence from Munich, Franz came home with a more care-laden brow than usual, and Edith sat down to the piano and sang a favourite air, which had more than once dispelled his momentary melancholy. The window was open, and her voice, fresh, pure, and sonorous, was audible outside the house. Franz listened, his gloom gradually softening into reverie, whilst Herman and Margaret rolled upon the carpet like kittens at play. That young woman, whose fair hair fell in abundant tresses upon her bare shoulders—those two fine children, joyously gambolling—the dreamer, whose hand sustained his thoughtful brow, composed a charming picture. Suddenly a stranger appeared, and paused upon the threshold of the apartment. He had entered so gently, that none had heard his steps or now observed his presence. Edith continued her song; the intruder listened motionless, and in apparent ecstasy, whilst silent tears coursed down his pale cheeks prematurely furrowed by pain or sorrow.”