A Twofold Life

by Wilhelmine von Hillern

"Henri!" she cried, faintly.

In vain: Henri ran down the staircase, sprang into his carriage, and shouted to the coachman, "To Ottmarsfeld!"

Ottmarsfeld, Heinrich von Ottmar's family estate, where he lived alone with his servants, was a two hours' drive from the capital. While within the limits of the city Heinrich looked incessantly back towards the tempting house, but when the carriage rolled through the gate he wrapped himself in his cloak and sank into a profound reverie.

The keen night air blew sharply upon him, and he shrank back into one corner of the carriage with a shiver. The trees along the highway towered stiff and bare in the darkness. Now and then one of the horses shied at the sight of some strange shadow. A muttered oath and the crack of the whip followed, then all was silent again except the regular beat of the hoofs as the horses trotted forward. Heinrich's heated fancy compared this cold, ghostly drive with the hour he had spent in the elegant perfumed boudoir, by the side of the fair, frivolous Parisienne. He closed his eyes to shut out the surrounding gloom, and conjured up the statues, flowers, and the moment when the graceful, weeping woman reclined before him on the silken causeuse.

"I am a fool," he said to himself; "to what phantom am I sacrificing myself? What object, what reward, can I hope for in return for my superhuman self-denial? None, save curses from the lips which offered me blissful happiness, and tears of sorrow in my own eyes. Yes, she was right. Who will lose anything if we are happy? Shall the fairest hours of my youth pass away in consuming, unsatisfied longing?--shall I allow my studies to suffer from this secret struggle, and draw upon myself the disgrace of failing in the examination? Are all these things outweighed by the imaginary duty imposed upon me by the title of friend, with which I have honored her fool of a husband, and whose violation he will notice as little as the most conscientious fulfillment of it? Will they be outweighed by the preservation of one's self-respect, and is not this, after all, a matter of opinion?--is it not a sort of coquetting with one's self? What will all my self-esteem avail, if the world calls me a simpleton because, under the ban of my passion, I neglected my studies and social interests? If I am pointed at as an incapable man, shall I not sink in my own eyes?" His blood grew more and more fevered as his reason coldly analyzed what a short time before had seemed to him an inviolable duty. The moral stand which he had taken in his conversation with Madame d'Anneaud was not sufficiently powerful to protect, him from the relapse which had now come. "I shall never rest," he thought, "until the beautiful woman is mine, then only I shall be myself again! My father always said that we could find no better way of defending ourselves against the power a woman obtains over our hearts than by degrading her. How the cold, shrewd man of the world would laugh if he were alive, and could see how I am toiling to keep this woman in a position from which she herself wishes to descend!--if he could see how my love hallows one who does not desire to be held sacred! And her husband! Well, if he discovers it I would give him satisfaction by a few ounces of blood, and none of my acquaintances would despise me for the scandal half as much as I might perhaps despise myself."

He drew out his watch: he would turn back if there was still time. It was too late: it was already past the hour when he could see Madame d'Anneaud alone. He clinched his teeth and hid his face in his cloak, as if shivering from a feverish chill. The carriage entered a thick wood, and at last stopped before a large iron gate.

"You are ill, Herr Baron," said the old valet de chambre as Heinrich entered the castle, trembling violently.

"Yes, yes, I feel very ill," he replied, passing an to his sleeping-room to wait with burning impatience for the following day, which would afford him an opportunity to atone for his previous reserve in the arms of the beautiful Madame d'Anneaud. But the next morning brought a farewell letter from the lovely Parisienne, who informed him that she should return at once to her home in France. It was written with all the pride and anger of a woman who has experienced the deepest possible humiliation; who, having offered more than was desired or accepted, now wishes to make amends for her too great willingness to yield by a double measure of coldness and harshness. The youth of twenty was still too great a novice in a woman's words to perceive that this cold reserve had as little real foundation as the pride from which it sprung, and which with such ladies too often supplies the place of true honor. Heinrich was hopelessly crushed, and as everything that is denied us doubly excites our desires, the indignant woman who had cast him off was far more charming in his eyes than when she had pleaded for his love. Remorse and passion strove in his heart with all the fury of the hot blood of twenty. It was the first connection of such a nature that Heinrich had ever formed, the first great feeling of his life. Such periods, with their secret resolutions, are those in which the elements of the inner life are analyzed, separated from each other, or harmoniously blended. They are the standard for the guidance of the whole life.

Heinrich von Ottmar had been educated entirely without love. His mother died before he reached his fifth year; his father, a heartless aristocrat, was Grand Steward of the Court of the Principality of H----, where Heinrich was now to commence his career, and all the efforts of the haughty, ambitious noble were directed solely to the one object of inoculating his son with the ideas which, as he believed, had made him great, and might prepare a similar destiny for Heinrich. He was one of those tyrannical persons who make even those they wish to benefit unhappy, because they take no account of individuality, and compel the victim of their anxiety to be happy, not in his own, but their way. He brought only discord into Heinrich's young soul, which was already sympathetically attracted by the development of the times, for while he succeeded on one hand in rousing and directing it entirely towards one object,--that of obtaining power and position on the loftiest heights of society,--he could not suppress his leaning towards the struggles for freedom peculiar to the times, which were an abomination to the man whose inclinations tended towards ultramontanism. Here also, influenced by the illusion that everything could be done by force, there were many violent scenes, in which he threatened the young defenseless boy with expulsion from his home, a father's curse, and disinheritance. But no opinions are changed, no convictions uprooted, by menaces and blows; they are at most forced to conceal themselves where it is impossible to struggle with them. Heinrich accustomed himself to be silent and to dissimulate at an age when he was incapable of understanding the moral wrong and evil of these qualities. Thus, under this father's tyrannical sway, every budding germ of manly truth was suffocated, and shot forth unavailingly. There are two results from such a course of training. When the parental authority asserts itself also in the petty details and interests of life, a most independent and rugged character is often developed, firmly determined to exchange a hated, tyrannical present for a free future, however dark it may be. This was not the case with Heinrich von Ottmar; on the contrary, his worldly-wise father allowed him full liberty in all the trifles on which youth sets so high a value,--greater liberty than a more conscientious man would have done. He knew how to make his home-life pleasant enough to him, induce him to fear expulsion from it as the greatest misfortune; thus he always retained his influence, and the youth, spoiled by the glitter and pleasures of life, bore the intellectual tyranny of his father because it allowed the most unlimited personal freedom, and learned to yield and submit. He was naturally generous and warmhearted, capable of enthusiasm for everything good and beautiful; but under these circumstances only his intellectual, not his moral, powers could develop, and his affections were forced to pine for the lack of food. But his hot blood asserted its rights, and as it found in his soul no lofty ideal against which its strong, youthful waves might dash, it lost itself in the broad, shallow stream of sensuality. His father held the opinion that there could be nothing more disadvantageous, more injurious to the thinker, as well as to the man of the world, than a deep feeling; and as he desired to make his son both, if possible, he wished to save him from the evil. He also knew that there is no better protection from it than the habit of frivolous, careless intercourse with insignificant natures, and therefore cheerfully endured this phase of Heinrich's character. He had no esteem for women himself, and it seemed to him a matter of indifference if the impulsive youth turned where favors were granted most speedily, and where he unconsciously lost his reverence for the sex. Thus the blinded father, with his inexorable sternness on the one side, converted a noble, many-sided nature into an ambiguous, varying character, and, by his unprincipled indulgence on the other hand, transformed a heart-craving love into a disposition of unbridled license; and when, in Heinrich's nineteenth year, he closed his eyes, he left his son entangled in a confusion of inextricable contradictions, with an incomprehensible impulse towards goodness and beauty in his breast, and without any compass to enable him to obtain them, desiring the right with the yet undestroyed power of a noble nature, but defrauded of the power of doing it; in spite of his father's influence a philanthropist, and through it an egotist. Thus he was a mystery to himself, whose solution he expected to find in life, not suspecting with what sacrifice he should be compelled to purchase it. Tortured by this secret conflict, he sought refuge and support in science, and devoted himself to the study of political law. He was too deeply imbued with the spirit of the times to find satisfaction for his ambition solely in the prerogatives of the nobility and a mere court office. True, he desired a position near the throne, but it must be one which should have some political importance, and deal not only with the organization of the court, but of the state. This was the highest aim which appeared before him, and he labored with honest zeal to reach it. Then he made the acquaintance of Madame d'Anneaud, who was visiting a married relative in H----. She was the first highly cultured woman he had ever known, and the impression made by her beauty, united to the polished manners and dainty coquetry of an aristocratic Parisienne, exerted an intoxicating influence over the mind and imagination of the young man. Her sudden departure inflamed his passion to the highest pitch; but in order to approach the beautiful woman he had formed a friendship with her husband, and the very bond which had brought the lovers together now formed a wall of separation between them. To mislead the wife of a confiding, unsuspicious friend was an act of dishonor from which his skeptical reason recoiled. In this conflict month after month elapsed in idleness. It was the year in which he was preparing for his examination; he felt that he should fail if he did not conquer his inertness and return to his studies. He had been too long accustomed to receive all the favors of love to be able to endure a hopeless wish and longing for any length of time. He must either possess Madame d'Anneaud or avoid her. He had chosen the latter ere he knew how difficult it would be to deny himself anything he ardently desired. He wished to do right; but when he felt the bitterness of such self-denial his strength to carry out the impulse failed, for he was already far too great an egotist to make any sacrifice, and without sacrifice there is no virtue.

Thus his first victory over himself was transformed into a defeat when Madame d'Anneaud's implacable letter robbed him of the ground on which he expected to enjoy with her the fruits of a shameful peace. Now, as he fancied, he had lost all, committed a wrong both against his beloved and himself, for which he must strive to atone with all the energy of passion. He drove into the city to see Madame d'Anneaud, but she refused to admit him. He wrote a despairing note and sent it to her by a confidential waiting-maid, but it was returned with the seal unbroken.