"You will not understand it," replied Gervayse Hastings, feebly, and with a singular inefficiency of pronunciation, and sometimes putting one word for another. "None have understood it—not even those who experience the like. It is a chillness—a want of earnestness—a feeling as if what should be my heart were a thing of vapor—a haunting perception of unreality! Thus seeming to possess all that other men have—all that other men aim at—I have really possessed nothing, neither joy nor griefs. All things, all persons—as was truly said to me at this table long and long ago—have been like shadows flickering on the wall. It was so with my wife and children—with those who seemed my friends: it is so with yourselves, whom I see now before me. Neither have I myself any real existence, but am a shadow like the rest."
"And how is it with your views of a future life?" inquired the speculative clergyman.
"Worse than with you," said the old man, in a hollow and feeble tone; "for I cannot conceive it earnestly enough to feel either hope or fear. Mine—mine is the wretchedness! This cold heart—this unreal life! Ah! it grows colder still."
It so chanced that at this juncture the decayed ligaments of the skeleton gave way, and the dry bones fell together in a heap, thus causing the dusty wreath of cypress to drop upon the table. The attention of the company being thus diverted for a single instant from Gervayse Hastings, they perceived, on turning again towards him, that the old man had undergone a change. His shadow had ceased to flicker on the wall.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Christmas Eve in Exile
IT is Christmas Eve in a large city of Bavaria. Along the streets, white with snow, in the confusion of the fog, among the rattle of carriages and the ringing of bells, the crowd hurries joyously towards the open-air roast-meat shops, the holiday stalls and booths. Brushing with a light rustling sound the shops decorated with ribbons and flowers, branches of green holly and whole spruce trees covered with pendants move along in the arms of passers-by, rising above all the heads, like a shadow of the Thuringian Forests, a touch of nature in the artificial life of winter. Night is falling. Over there, behind the gardens of the "Résidence," one sees still a glow of the setting sun, deep red through the fog; and throughout the city there is such gayety, so many festive preparations, that every light that flames up at a window seems to hang on a Christmas tree. But this is no ordinary Christmas. We are in the year of Grace 1870; and the birth of Christ is but a pretext the more to drink to the illustrious Van der Than, and to celebrate the triumph of Bavarian arms. Noël! Noël! Even the Jews in the lower city join in the merriment. There is old Augustus Cahn, turning the corner at "The Blue Grape" on the run. Never have his ferret-eyes sparkled as to-night. Never has his brush-like queue wriggled so merrily. On his sleeve, worn threadbare by the cords of his wallet, hangs a tidy little basket, full to the brim, covered with a yellow napkin, with the neck of a bottle and a sprig of holly peeping out.
What the deuce is the old usurer going to do with all that? Is he, too, going to celebrate Christmas? Will he gather together his friends, his family, to drink to the German Fatherland? But no. Every one knows well that old Cahn has no Fatherland. His Fatherland is his strong-box. He has neither family nor friends; nothing but creditors. His sons, his associates too, left three months ago with the army. Down there behind the gun-carriages of the home guard they ply their trade, selling brandy, buying watches, and at night, after a battle, going out to rifle the pockets of the dead and to empty the knapsacks that have fallen in the trenches by the way. Father Cahn, too old to follow his children, has remained in Bavaria, and there he does a magnificent business with the French prisoners. Always prowling about the barracks, it is he who buys watches, medals, money-orders. One sees him gliding through the hospitals and among the ambulances. He approaches the bedside of the wounded and asks them very softly in his hideous gibberish:—
"Haf you anydings to zell?"