Transcriber's Note:
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THE

BREAKING OF THE STORM.

BY

FRIEDRICH SPIELHAGEN.

Translated from the German

BY

S. E. A. H. STEPHENSON.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL III.

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON.
1877.

(All Rights Reserved.)

THE BREAKING OF THE STORM.

BOOK V.--Continued.

CHAPTER V.

Frau Feldner, Valerie's old lady's-maid, told Elsa that her lady was in a sound sleep, as was always the case with her after a violent attack of headache, and out of which she would hardly awake before evening. Elsa, who had herself suffered from the extraordinary sultriness of the day, and from the uncomfortable conversation at dinner, and was also put out and agitated by the scene with the Count, intended to employ the time in taking a walk; and thinking that Carla and the Count were already gone, was going, out of courtesy, to invite Frau von Wallbach to accompany her. Hat and shawl in hand, she was coming out of the Baroness's rooms, and innocently lifting the portière of the anteroom, had become a very unwilling spectator of the little scene which took place between the Count and Carla. In her consternation she had let the curtain fall again, and without even thinking whether she had been observed or not, had hastily run downstairs, and now wandered round the garden trying to persuade herself that what she had seen was a mistake--her eyes had deceived her. It was not possible that Carla could have so far forgotten herself, that she could so shamefully deceive her brother. But the more determinately she tried to drive back and destroy the hateful picture, the more terribly distinctly it stood out in her mind.

It must be so! The link that should have united Ottomar and Carla was torn asunder for ever, even if what she had just seen were only the sudden delirium of the moment. But how could that be, when she thought of Carla's intense frivolity, which had often caused her such anxiety; and of the Count's audacity, from which she had from the first instinctively shrunk, and of which he had even now given such proof; when she remembered the confidential whispering, the coquettish flirting, the many, many things which had taken place between the two in her very presence, and which had been so displeasing and offensive, but, above all, so incomprehensible to her, and of which she now found so terrible an explanation! What would Ottomar say? He must hear of it! What would he do? Perhaps exult that the chain which fettered him was broken--in good time! But that would not be like Ottomar. No man would take it patiently--and he! so sensitive, passionate, and violent, who had so often risked his life in a duel on the slightest provocation--a disagreeable word, a look--which gave him offence! But, on the other hand, had he really a right to feel himself offended? Had he really tried to retain Carla's love, or even first to win it, as it was his duty to do, after he became engaged to her? Had he not neglected her in the eyes of the world? left her, unguarded and unsheltered, to throw herself into that roaring whirlpool of social life in which she had formerly moved with such fatal enjoyment, and in which she had gained such brilliant triumphs? If so, he would have no betrayed love, only wounded vanity to avenge--to risk his life for a thing in which he did not himself believe, only because in the eyes of society this sad comedy of errors needed a sanguinary end. Oh! this miserable slavery, in which she had once fancied herself happy and free, only because she had not learnt how a free heart beats, and for what a soul longs which that heart has set free, and which now spreads out its wings to soar away from all these wretched barriers of prejudice and illusion into the clear atmosphere of a noble and unselfish love! She could no longer bear to remain between the high, straight hedges and the interwoven branches of the beech-walk, in which here and there appeared stone gods and goddesses in odd and exaggerated attitudes, as if startled at the sight of one who could think and feel so differently to those who had their pride and joy in these quaint, old-fashioned splendours.

Away! away! to him she loved, if it might be, to seek shelter in his strong arms from this hollow, unreal world, to weep out upon his faithful breast her grief and indignation, to feel free in his presence from all this self-made sorrow, this foolish misery, and never, never again to leave him. And if this highest happiness were denied her, if she must return to the slavery of these intolerable circumstances--out into the open then, over the brown meadows, through the dark fields, to the white dunes which peeped out in the distance, to have one look at the sea--his beloved sea! Might it but bring her a greeting from her beloved, a waft of his breath to cool her hot brow, to refresh her burning eyes, were it only by a tear of unsatisfied longing!

Over the brown meadows and through the dark fields Elsa hurried, in the direction of a farm which lay before her at some distance, and which she must pass if she followed any further the sandy path, which looked as if it would take her quickest to her goal. The path led her ever nearer to the farm, and at last directly into it. Elsa did not like it; she would rather have met no one, since she dared not hope to meet him for whom she longed; but an attempt to get round the outside of the barn was frustrated by wet ground here and a hedge there. She must turn back or pass through the farm--a little, melancholy, quiet farm, a few tumble-down out-buildings, from which the dwelling-house was only to be distinguished by the windows--which looked dilapidated enough too--and by the two lime-trees, which in summer made a pleasant shade before the door, but whose bare, leafless branches now projected in a ghostly manner over the decayed thatched roof against the grey sky.

A tall, broad-shouldered man came out from a barn-door, followed by a little dog, who flew at the stranger, barking loudly. The man called the animal back. At the first sound of his voice, Elsa, to whom the whole scene had appeared wonderfully familiar, as if she must have seen it before, recognised the honest farmer who had so kindly sheltered her last autumn.

"Herr Pölitz!" she said, holding out her hand. "You have forgotten me."

A look of joy came over the sunburnt face. "Come, this is good of you to pay us a visit!"

"You knew, then, that I was in Warnow?"

The farmer smiled in his melancholy way.

"How should the like of us not know such a thing? But that you should have remembered us! My wife will be so pleased."

He went towards the house. Elsa was very sorry to spoil the pleasure of these worthy people, but she could not permit herself even so trifling an untruth. The farmer's face clouded, as she explained, with some embarrassment, that during the week she had been at Warnow she had never been beyond the garden, and had not now intended any visit; in fact, that she had not known that these buildings, which she had often enough seen from her window across the fields, were Herr Pölitz's farm. "But," she added, "I should have come had I known, or as soon as I discovered it. For that I give you my word."

"We could not have expected it," answered the farmer; "but since you say so, I believe you. But will you not come in!" he added hesitatingly.

"Yes, for a minute, to speak to your wife and to see the children."

"The children!"

As they now stood before the door, the farmer laid his brown hand on her arm, and said in a low voice:

"Don't ask after little Carl. Since Christmas he has slept over there in the churchyard. It was a sorrowful Christmas. But in a few days, if God will, we shall again have two."

He left Elsa no time to answer, but opened the low house-door--how well Elsa remembered the rattling bell!--called out to his wife, and showed his guest into the parlour on the left. As she went in, the figure of a woman rose up from a stool near the stove, whom Elsa in the dusk, which already prevailed in the room, with its small, dull windows, took for Frau Pölitz, but on coming nearer, saw that it was a young and pretty, but pale and sickly-looking girl. She greeted her in a shy and embarrassed manner, and went away without speaking a word.

"A sister of mine," said the farmer, answering Elsa's look, in a low voice and turning away his head. "Will you not sit down? If you will allow me, I will go myself and look for my wife."

He went out. Elsa would have preferred to follow him. The close atmosphere in the little, over-heated room nearly took away her breath; and worse than the atmosphere was the sense of misery which was so palpable here, and spoke so distinctly in the farmer's melancholy face, in the girl's white cheeks, in everything on which her glance fell--even in the gloomy silence of the wretched farmyard and in the dilapidated house. Had she fled from the splendid misery of the castle only to find the same helpless sorrow in the little farmhouse! But at least it was not self-made suffering, so that it must awaken compassion, though it could not revolt the soul like what she had just experienced. How could she refuse these poor people the only thing they had asked of her--a tender word of compassion?

The farmer came in with his wife. He had already told her all--that the young lady could only say a word in passing to-day, but that in a few days she would come and spend a longer time with them. "Hardly in a few days," said the farmer; "we are going to have bad weather. I must even urge the young lady not to remain too long; it may break up this evening."

He had been standing at the window, and now left the room, murmuring a few words of apology, of which Elsa only understood "roof" and "cover."

"It is the roof of the barn," explained his wife; "it is so rotten he has had to take down one corner, and must now cover it over as well as he can, that the storm may not carry away the rest. To be sure it may be all one to him. We must leave at Easter anyhow."

"How is that?" asked Elsa.

"Our lease is not renewed," answered the woman; "and no new farmer is coming either. Everything here is to be pulled down and a big hotel built, so they say. God knows what will become of us!"

The poor woman, who looked even paler and more worn in her present condition than in the autumn, sighed deeply. Elsa tried to comfort her with words of sympathy. "It would be easy for a man like Herr Pölitz to find something else, and if capital was wanting to rent a new, and perhaps larger and better farm, some means would be devised for that also. The great thing was, not to lose courage herself. She must think only of her husband, who took life hardly enough as it was, and whose strength would be paralysed if she lost heart. She must think of the child that remained to her, and of the other that was coming, and everything would come right."

The woman smiled through her tears.

"Ah!" she said, "what a comfort it is to hear such words from kind people! It does not last long, but for the moment one feels lighter; and that is a great deal when one's heart is so heavy. That is what I always say to the Captain. He is just like you."

A thrill of joy passed through Elsa. Reinhold had been here! He had also sought the place to which her thoughts had so often returned.

"He has often been here already," said Frau Pölitz; "only the day before yesterday he came on foot; but generally he goes in his boat to Ahlbeck."

"How far is it to Wissow?" asked Elsa.

"About four or five miles if you go right over Wissow Head; three miles to the Head, and half as much down to Wissow. You can see it there from the top. It is very fine up there on a summer's day. We used to go there very often formerly, but we never go now."

The pale girl here came in, took a key from a shelf near the door, and went out again immediately.

"Your sister-in-law is here to nurse you?" said Elsa. "The poor girl seems rather to need nursing herself."

"Yes, God knows?" said Frau Pölitz. She pulled at her apron with an embarrassed look and drew nearer to Elsa on the little sofa, and went on in a low voice, "I ought not to talk about it, but you are so kind and good, and it lies so terribly heavy on my mind. If you would----"

"If your husband has forbidden you to speak, you had better not tell me."

The woman shook her head.

"No, no, not that; he does not know--at least I hope not, although since yesterday--perhaps it is as well----"

"Tell me then, it may calm you," said Elsa, who was frightened at the woman's evident excitement.

"Yes, yes; true," said Frau Pölitz; "and you might also advise me as to what I shall do. Marie is--she has--if you look at me like that I cannot tell you--she has always been in all other respects a good, industrious, clever girl, only sometimes a little high-flown, poor thing. She was housekeeper over at Golm to the Count, for two years, although my husband never approved of it, as in a large house like that--you know well how it is--there are so many people, and in a bachelor's establishment it is difficult to keep order and discipline. But she had good wages, and all went on well till last Michaelmas, when she suddenly gave warning, without saying a word to us, and went to Sundin, also as housekeeper, to the President's. But that did not last long, and the President's lady, who is a very good lady--may God reward her!--looked after her; and we knew nothing about it all until the poor infant died, in November. My husband was quite frantic, as he lays great store by his family, which has seen better days, and especially this sister, who had always been his pet. But what was to be done? What is done is done, and when at Christmas our little Carl died, and I could not well manage the household work, I wrote to the President's lady and she sent her here to us, and wrote at the same time such a kind letter. I will show it to you next time you come. Marie has been a real help to me, and has cost us nothing. She has saved something, and the President's lady also helped, and she has often offered me her little store. Of course I have never taken it, although I am convinced that it is honestly earned, and that he--the father--has never troubled himself about the poor thing. She told me that herself, but always added, 'He knew nothing of it--nothing at all.' But that is impossible to believe, even if we, my husband and I, had no suspicion as to who could be the father. The name should never pass her lips, the poor girl said. And even yesterday it never did so." The woman paused for a few moments, as if to gather strength for what she still had to relate. Elsa's heart beat with sympathy, and with a dull fear, which increased every moment, for which, however, she could not account. What possible reference could the poor girl's story have to her! The woman had come quite close to her, and went on in a still lower voice: "Yesterday afternoon, just at this time, my husband was behind there at the barn, Marie was ironing, with the child in the room next the kitchen, where, if you remember, the window looks on to the garden, and I was here washing, when some riders came up to the farm----" Elsa's heart gave a leap, and she involuntarily turned away from the woman. "Good heavens!" exclaimed the latter; "I trusted the Captain. He told me the day before yesterday that there was not a word of truth in the report about here that you were going to marry the Count. If it is true, I dare not say another word!"

"Thank God it is not the case," said Elsa, by a strong effort overcoming her emotion. "The Count is then the man!"

Frau Pölitz nodded. "She cannot any longer deny it, and indeed she confessed as much to me, when I brought her to herself. They had dismounted and come into the house; the Count said that the young lady was unwell, and begged for a cup of coffee. May God forgive him, but it was certainly untrue, as the young lady was not the least unwell; on the contrary, did nothing but laugh, and they went through the house straight into the garden. A few old trees stand in it, and the hedges are also rather overgrown, so that it is quite sheltered; but Marie must have seen more than the poor girl could bear; and as I stood there by the stove she suddenly shrieked out, so that I thought she had let the heater of the iron fall on her foot, or that the child had hurt itself, and rushed in. There she lay on her back on the floor, and I thought she was dead, as she neither moved nor stirred, and was cold as ice and white as a sheet. You may easily imagine how frightened I was, and I may thank God that it was no worse. I called out, and Rike, our maidservant, came, and I sent her for my husband; and it was well I did so, for Marie came to herself, looked all round her with a bewildered, glassy stare, and then to the window, and asked timidly, 'Is he still there?' I knew then for certain, and begged her, for God's sake, to keep silence before Carl, my husband. But since then he has been so odd; I am afraid he must have remarked something when he went into the garden to tell the Count that they must wait a little for the coffee and so forth. The Count would not hear anything more about the coffee, and the young lady told me how sorry she was. She had had no idea that we had an invalid in the house. Upon which my husband said, 'Excuse me, ma'am, my sister is not an invalid, she has only just been taken ill;' and he said it so strangely, with his eyes fixed as if some other thought were in his mind. What shall I do? Shall I tell him? What do you think?"

Frau Pölitz held both Elsa's hands clasped in hers and looked anxiously into her eyes.

"I think--yes," said Elsa. "You cannot keep it from him in the end, and a wife should have no secrets from her husband. It seems to me that all the evil in the world comes from our keeping and concealing from one another our most sacred feelings, as if we had reason to be ashamed of them; as if we did not live in them--only in them!"

She stood up and seized her hat and shawl from the round table.

"You are going already?" said Frau Pölitz sorrowfully; "but indeed it is a long way to Warnow."

"I have much farther to go," said Elsa, putting on her hat. "Three miles, did you say?"

"Where to?"

"To Wissow Head." Frau Pölitz stared at Elsa, as if she were talking nonsense. "Yes," said Elsa, "to the Head. I cannot miss the way?"

"A road goes from here straight through the marshes, but makes a great bend at Ahlbeck on account of the brook. But, my dear young lady, for heaven's sake what do you want to go there for?"

Elsa had put on her shawl, and now grasped Frau Pölitz by both hands. "I will tell you. To have one look--one look only--at the place where the man I love lives. You need not look at me so anxiously, dear Frau Pölitz, He really lives at Wissow."

"The Superintendent of Pilots?" exclaimed Frau Pölitz.

She sat down and burst into tears of joy.

"You also love him," said Elsa with a proud smile.

"Oh! indeed I do," cried Frau Pölitz, sobbing; "and oh! how happy my husband will be! May I tell him----"

"You may tell whom you will."

"Oh! how pleased I am! You could not have given me greater pleasure than to tell me this. It makes me feel quite young again. Such a charming gentleman as he is, and such a dear, dear young lady! I feel sure that everything must go right now."

She kissed Elsa's hand again and again, with hot tears. Elsa gently disengaged herself. "I will tell you everything next time. Now I must go."

"No," said Frau Pölitz, standing up, "you must not walk such a long way; my husband shall drive you."

"I am determined to walk," said Elsa.

"You cannot be back before dark. It is already beginning to get dark, and we are certainly going to have bad weather."

Elsa would allow no objection to weigh with her. She was a good walker and had eyes like a hawk. She feared neither the distance nor the darkness.

With that she once more shook Frau Pölitz's hand, and the next minute had left room, and house, and farm, and was walking quickly through the fields along the road, of which the farmer's wife had spoken, towards the headland, whose broad mass stood out from the wide plain.

CHAPTER III.

It was three miles, Frau Pölitz had to Wissow Head, but it seemed to Elsa as if the long, winding road would never come to an end. And yet she walked so quickly, that the little empty waggon which at first was far ahead of her, was now as far behind. That wretched vehicle was the only sign of human life. Besides that, only the brown plain, like a desert waste, as far as her eye could reach. No large trees, only here and there a few stunted willows, and some wretched shrubs by the ditches which intersected each other here and there, and by the broad sluggish stream which she now crossed by means of a rickety and unprotected wooden bridge. The stream evidently flowed from the chain of hills on her right hand, at the foot of which Elsa could see far apart the buildings of Gristow and of Damerow, the two other properties belonging to Warnow.

Taking a long circuit, she gradually ascended to Wissow Head, which lay straight before her, whilst the plain to the left stretched without the smallest undulation to the low-lying dunes, which only showed white here and there over the edge of the moor. Only once, for a few minutes, a leaden-grey streak showed through a gap by which the brook made its way, which Elsa knew must be the sea, although she could scarcely distinguish it from the sky, for the sky above her was the same leaden colour too, only that towards the east, over the sea, it seemed somewhat darker than over the hills to the west, and in the leaden firmament hung here and there a solitary whitish speck like the smoke of gunpowder, which in the motionless air remained always in the same spot. Not the slightest breath was stirring, but from time to time a strange murmur passed across the waste, as if the brown moor was trying to rouse itself from its long slumber; and through the heavy, gloomy atmosphere there came a sound as of a soft, long-drawn-out, plaintive wail, and then again a death-like stillness, in which Elsa seemed to hear the beating of her heart.

But more fearful almost than the stillness of this desert spot was the shrieking of a great flock of sea-gulls, which she had startled from one of the many hollows on the moors, and which now hovered hither and thither in the grey atmosphere, their pointed bills turned downwards, and followed her for a long time, as if in furious anger at this intruder upon their domain.

Nevertheless she walked on and on, quicker and quicker, following an impulse which she would allow no considerations of prudence to check, which was stronger even than the dread which earth and sky whispered to her with ghost-like breath, threatening and warning her with supernatural voices. And then came another more terrible fear. Far away in the distance, at the foot of the headland, which ever stood out more majestically before her, she had fancied she saw dark moving objects, and now that she approached nearer, she was convinced of it. Labourers--many hundred--who were working at an apparently endless embankment, which had already reached a considerable height.

She could not avoid crossing the embankment, even if she made a great circuit; she must pass through the long line of workmen. She did so with a courteous greeting to those who stood nearest to her. The men, who were already working lazily enough, let their barrows stand, and stared at her without returning her greeting. As she passed on, loud shouts and coarse laughter sounded behind her. Turning involuntarily, she saw that two of the number had followed her, and only stopped as she turned, perhaps also checked by the noise made by the others.

She continued on her way, almost running. There was now only a narrow path over the short withered grass and across the sandy tracts which alternated on the slope of the hill. Elsa said to herself that she should remain within sight of the men till she reached the top, and might at any time be followed by them. But if she turned back in the deepening twilight the men would perhaps have left off work; no overseer would be there to keep their rudeness in check, and there would be the whole endless plain as far as Warnow in which these rough men might bewilder, terrify, and insult her. Should she turn back at once, while it was yet time? beg for the escort of one of the overseers? or take refuge in the waggon which she had before overtaken, and which was now close to the workmen, or in another vehicle, which from the height on which she stood she could now see in the distance, and which must also have followed her, as there was no other road over the plain.

Whilst Elsa was thus deliberating with herself, she hastened, as if under a spell, with beating heart, up the incline, whose top stood out sharply in a straight line against the grey sky between her and the sea.

With every step the sea and the line of dunes stretched broader and farther to the left, and her gaze wandered out to where the vapour of the sea and sky mingled together, and over the beautifully curved line of the coast to the wooded heights of Golmberg, whose purple masses hung threateningly over.

Above the confused mass of crowded treetops rose the tower of the castle. Between Golmberg yonder and the height on which she stood was the brown plain over which she had passed--inhospitable as the sea itself, from which it was only divided by the yellow outline of the dunes. The only abode of mankind was the fishing hamlet of Ahlbeck, which, close to the foot of the promontory, now lay almost directly at her feet. There also, between the houses and the sea, on the broad strand, were long moving lines of workmen as far as the two piers, which, curving towards each other, ran out into the sea. At the piers were two or three large vessels, which seemed to be unloading, whilst a fleet of fishing-boats, all on the same course, were making for the shore. Though all the sails were set, yet the boats were really only moved by the oars. The uniform position of the brown sails and the monotonous movements of the oars, formed a curious contrast to the confused whirring of the white gulls, who, as before, circled incessantly above her head, between her and the shore.

She saw it all with her clear-sighted eyes, as a traveller on the railway mechanically observes the details of the landscape which the train rushes through, while his thoughts are at home, tasting the rapture which he will feel after his long separation from those he loves. And she, alas! dared not hope to look into the dear eyes, to hold the loved hands in hers, to hear the sound of that strong, yet gentle and kind voice. She only wanted to see the place where he lived.

And it seemed as if even that small consolation was to be denied to her. She had already wandered some way along the path on the top of the hill, without gaining the slightest glimpse of the other side, where Wissow must lie, only the sky looked leaden over the edge of the plateau. Perhaps she might see it if she followed the broader road that she had now reached, and that, coming from her right, led upwards along the side of the hill to a heap of immense logs, above which rose a huge signal-post, which must be erected on the topmost height of the headland, and probably also on its extreme edge.

And in fact, as she now climbed higher and higher, a pale streak appeared to her right--the shore of the mainland--and then again the leaden surface of the sea, on which here and there a sail was seen, and at last, immediately beneath her on this side, a white point of dune, which spread gradually like a wedge towards the headland, until it formed a little peninsula, in the centre of which lay a dozen or so of houses of various sizes between the white sands and the brown moor. That was Wissow! That must be Wissow!

And now, as she stood on the point which she had reached by the exertion of all her physical and moral powers, and however lovingly she stretched out her arms, felt that the object of her desires still lay so far off, so utterly beyond her reach--now for the first time she believed that she understood the dumb, terrifying voices of the solitude and loneliness around her, the whispering and rustling of the moor, the wailing spirit-voices in the air. Alone! alone!

Infinite sorrow welled up in her heart, her knees gave way, she sank down upon a stone near the logs, buried her face in her hands, and burst into tears like a helpless, lost child. She did not see that a man, who was leaning against the signal-post behind the logs, watching the sea, startled by the strange sound near him, stepped forward. She did not hear his steps as he hastened towards her over the short turf.

"Elsa!"

She sprang up with a half-stifled cry.

"Elsa!"

And again she cried out--a wild cry of joy, which rang strangely through the stillness, and she lay on his breast, clinging to him like a drowning woman.

"Reinhold! My Reinhold!"

She wept, she laughed, she cried again and again: "Reinhold, my Reinhold!"

Speechless with happiness and astonishment at the sweet surprise, he drew her down to him on the stone on which she had been sitting.

She leaned her head on his breast. "I have so longed for you."

"Elsa, my darling Elsa!"

"I was forced to come, I could not help it; I was drawn here, as if by invisible hands. And now I have you! Oh! do not leave me again. Take me with you yonder to your home. My home is there with you. With you! Do not drive me out again into the desolate, false and loveless world which lies behind me. With you only is happiness, peace, joy, truth, fidelity! Oh! how your true loving heart beats, I feel it. It loves me as I love you. It has longed for me, as my poor, distracted heart has longed for you."

"Yes, my Elsa, it has longed for you intensely, unspeakably. I came up here because it gave me no peace. I wanted to have one look only to where you were--one last look, before----"

"Before what--for heaven's sake!"

He had led her the few steps to the logs, and now stood, with his arm round her, close to the edge of the hill, which sloped so precipitously down from its frowning brow, that they seemed to be hanging immediately over the grey sea in the grey sky.

"Look, Elsa! There comes the storm. I hear it, I see it, as if it were already let loose. It may be hours first, but it will come, it must come with terrible fury. Everything shows signs of it. That leaden sea below us will be tossed in wild waves, whose spray will be thrown up even to this height. Woe to the ships that are not already safe in harbour, and perhaps even there they are not secure from its wild fury. Woe to the low-lying lands beneath us. I meant to have written to you this morning, because I saw it coming even yesterday, and to tell you that you would do better to leave Warnow, but you would not have gone."

"Never! I am so proud that you trust me, that you have told me this. And if the storm breaks, and I know that your dear life is in danger, I will be firm; or if I tremble I will not fear, only to myself I will say, 'He could not do his duty, he could not be the brave true man whom I love, if he knew that I were weeping and wringing my hands, whilst he must guide and command as on that evening;' do you remember? Do you know, my darling, that I loved you then! and do you remember you told me that I had the eyes of a sailor? Oh! how I remember every word, every look, and how pleased I was that I was not obliged to give you back the compass directly! I did not mean to keep it, I meant you to have it again."

"You were more honest then than I was, my darling. I was determined not to give you back your glove. You had taken it off when you were looking through my telescope; it lay on the deck and I took it up. Since then it has never left me. See! it has been my talisman. We sailors are superstitious. I have sworn never to part with it, until instead of the glove, I hold your dear hand in mine for ever."

He kissed the little grey glove before he returned it to his breast-pocket. They had again seated themselves on the stone--softly whispering, caressing, jesting, in loving talk, heart to heart and lip to lip, forgetting, in the paradise of their young love, the desert which surrounded them, the darkness which was ever deepening, and the storm which was brooding in the leaden air, over the leaden sea, like the angel of destruction over a world which he hoped to annihilate for ever, and to cast back into primeval chaos. A dull rumbling sound quivering in the distance attracted their attention; followed immediately by a sound of rushing through the air, without any motion that they could feel even at this height, and then again followed the deathlike stillness.

Reinhold sprang up.

"It comes quicker than I thought. We have not a moment to lose."

"What are you going to do?"

"To take you back."

"You cannot. You must be at your post. You did not come to Warnow this morning on account of it. How can you now absent yourself so far, when the danger is much nearer? No, no, my darling, do not look so anxiously at me. I must learn to live without fear, and I will. I am quite determined. From this moment there shall be no fear, even before the world. I cannot live any longer without you, and you cannot live without me. If I were still in ignorance--but now I know! And, believe me, my dear father will be the first to understand. He must have known already when he said to me, what he also wrote to you, 'I leave your fate in your own hands.' Ottomar and my aunt may share my inheritance; my proud father would have taken nothing from me, and you--you take me as I am, and lead me to your home for ever. One more look at my paradise! One more kiss, and now farewell! farewell!"

She embraced him fervently, and then would have freed herself, but he held her hand fast.

"It is impossible, Elsa; it is already growing dark up here, and in half an hour below it will be night. You cannot be certain of keeping to the road, which can no longer be distinguished from the moor, and that is full of deep bogs. It is really impossible, Elsa."

"It must be possible. I should despise myself if I kept you back from your duty; and how could you continue to love me, and not to look upon your love as a burden, if I did so? How do you know that you may not be wanted at the shortest notice? At this moment possibly the men may be standing helpless, and looking out for their leader. Reinhold, by your love! am I right or not?"

"You are indeed right, but----"

"No 'but,' my darling, we must part." They were as they spoke hastening hand-in-hand along the path by which Elsa had before reached the top, and now stood on the cross way which led on one side to the Warnow moor, and on the other to Wissow.

"Only to the foot. Till I know you are on the right path," said Reinhold.

"Not a step farther. Hark! What is that?"

He had also noticed it already--a sound as of horses' feet, galloping on the hard turf behind the slope of the hill which rose before them and concealed from them any farther view of the other and more precipitous side. The next moment a rider appeared in sight over the hill. He had now reached the top, and pulling up his horse, rose in his saddle and appeared to be looking round him.

"It is the Count," said Elsa.

A deep glow came into her face. "You must accompany me a little way now," she said, drawing a deep breath. "Come."

She took his arm. At that moment the Count, who had been looking above them, looked down, and saw the pair. He put spurs to his horse, and galloping down the slope, was with them in a trice. He had no doubt recognised Reinhold at once, for when he checked his horse and took off his hat, his countenance did not show the slightest trace of wonder or astonishment. He seemed in fact not to see Reinhold, as if he had met Elsa alone.

"This is good luck indeed. How delighted your aunt will be. She is waiting there; the carriage could not come any farther."

He pointed with the handle of his whip over the slope of the hill.

"I assure you it is so, though you seem so astonished. Your aunt was very uneasy at your long absence--inquired in the neighbourhood--learnt from Pölitz that you had come here--a strange fancy, by Jove!--your aunt was determined to come herself--I had just returned with Fräulein von Wallbach, and begged to escort her--was beginning to despair. Awfully lucky! May I be allowed to accompany you to the carriage? it is not a hundred yards off."

He had swung himself from his saddle, and held his horse by the bridle.

Reinhold looked straight into Elsa's eyes. She understood and answered the look.

"We are much obliged to you, Count Golm," he said, "but we will not trespass on your kindness one instant longer than is necessary. I will myself conduct my betrothed to the Baroness."

"Ah!" said the Count.

He had pictured to himself beforehand the terrible embarrassment which, in his opinion, the two culprits would feel on becoming aware of his presence, and the shock that the Baroness would experience if he could tell her in what company he had had the happiness of meeting her niece. He took it for granted that on his arrival the fellow would take himself off to Wissow, with some embarrassed words of explanation. And now he could not believe his ears, and he could hardly trust his eyes, as Elsa and this fellow, turning their backs upon him, walked off arm-in-arm, as if he had not been there. With one spring he was again in his stirrups.

"Allow me at least to announce the joyful news to the Baroness!" he cried, as bowing sarcastically he galloped past and hastened up the hill, behind which he almost immediately disappeared.

"Wretch!" said Elsa; "thank you, Reinhold, for having understood me, for having freed me for ever from him and all. You cannot imagine how thankful I am, nor why I am so thankful. I will not trouble your loving heart yet with the hateful things I have learned. I will tell you another time. Happen what will, I am yours, you are mine. That happiness is so great, everything else is in comparison small and insignificant."

At a slight distance from them stood the open carriage, and beside it a horseman. They thought it was the Count, but on coming nearer they saw that it was a servant. The Count had vanished. As soon as he had imparted the great discovery, with a sneering laugh to the Baroness, receiving no other reply than, "I am obliged to you, Count, for your escort so far"--the two last words being pronounced with peculiar emphasis--he again took off his hat and rode away over the hill.

The Baroness got out of the carriage and came towards the lovers. Elsa dropped Reinhold's arm and hastened towards her aunt. Her impetuous embrace told all that was necessary. As Reinhold stepped forward, the Baroness held out her hand to him, and said in an agitated voice, "You bring me my dear child--and yourself. I thank you doubly."

Reinhold kissed the trembling hand. "There is no time to make speeches," he said, "and your kind heart knows what I feel. God bless you!"

"And you also, my Reinhold," cried Elsa, throwing her arms round him; "God bless you! Good luck and joy be with you!"

He had helped the ladies into the carriage, one more pressure of the loved hand, and the vehicle started off, preceded by the servant. In spite of the hilly nature of the ground, it was possible to go quickly, as the soil was firm and the road good, even up here on the top, and Reinhold had urged the utmost speed. Only a few minutes had passed, therefore, before the carriage disappeared behind the hill, and half an hour must elapse before it again came in sight on the plain. He had no time to wait for that. He dared not lose another moment. The beacons were already lighted below in Wissow. At that moment a light shone over the sea, it was the signal for a pilot. It would be instantly obeyed, he knew; but at any moment some new arrangements might be necessary which would require his presence. He would take a quarter of an hour to get there at his quickest pace. He sprang in great bounds down the hill, when a horseman rose up right before him out of a dip in the ground which lay in the direction of the hills to the right, and remained standing on the path. He appeared so suddenly that Reinhold nearly ran against the horse.

"You are in a great hurry now, it seems," said the Count,

"I am in a great hurry," answered Reinhold, breathless from his quick run, as he tried to pass the horse. The Count turned it round so that he now faced Reinhold.

"Make way!" cried Reinhold.

"I am on my own land," answered the Count.

"The road is free!"

"And you are for freedom in all things!"

"Once more! Make way!"

"When it suits me."

Reinhold seized the bridle, and the horse, struck sharply by the spurs on either side, reared up. Reinhold started back.

The next moment he had drawn a long dirk, which, sailor-like, was always at his side.

"I should be sorry for the horse," he cried, "but if you will have it----"

"I only wished to say good-evening to you, Captain; I forgot it before. Good-evening."

The Count took off his hat with a sneering laugh, turned his horse round again, and rode off down into the hollow out of which he had come.

"Such people never learn," murmured Reinhold, as he put up his knife. It was a speech he had often heard from his uncle Ernst. His uncle Ernst, who must have felt as he now did, in the terrible moment when the sword descended upon him. Her father's sword. Good God! is it really true that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children? That this strife will last for ever, from generation to generation? That we, who are blameless, must take it up against our will and our convictions?

A clap of thunder, still in the distance, but coming nearer, rolled through the heavy air, louder and more threatening than the last, followed again by a tremendous gust of wind, not this time in the upper strata of clouds, but already descending upon the heights and slopes, and wailing and groaning as it died away in the hollows. The next gust might strike the sea, and let loose the storm which would come up with the tide.

Another struggle was impending before which human malice would seem as child's play, and human hatred an offence, and only one feeling would remain victorious--Love!

Reinhold felt this in the lowest depths of his heart, as he now tried to make up for the moments lost in so painfully trifling a way, and hastened down in spite of all to risk his life if necessary for the lives of other men.

CHAPTER IV.

Few words passed between the ladies until they reached home. The aunt appeared to be suffering from extreme exhaustion that was increased by the rough drive over the bad road, which, as Reinhold had foretold, they could hardly distinguish from the heath in the rapidly approaching darkness; and to all this was added the oppressive sultriness of the thick damp atmosphere, in which even Elsa herself found breathing difficult. She also was silent though her heart was full, for she had thankfully perceived that, come what might, her aunt would be on her side. Had she not answered the announcement of Elsa's engagement to Reinhold, startling as it must have been to her, unhesitatingly, with a warm embrace which was more eloquent than any words? And now she scarcely once let go her handy or if she did so for a moment it was only to seize it again immediately as if she wished at least to assure her of her sympathy and love, though in her weakness she could do no more for her.

They reached the castle at last. The Baroness sank almost fainting into her maid's arms, and was immediately conducted by her, with the help of Elsa, to her own apartments. "Thank you a thousand, thousand times," said Elsa, as she wished her aunt good-night.

She was the less inclined to look for Carla in the drawing-room where she would probably be, as she heard that Frau von Wallbach had already gone to her room--to read, as she always gave out herself--to sleep, as Carla maintained. The chattering lady's-maid told Elsa, without waiting to be asked, that the Count had come there again shortly before their return, but only for a few minutes, and had brought Fräulein von Wallbach word that they would soon be back, probably with Captain Schmidt. The girl smiled as she uttered the last word, not so much but that she could have denied it if need were, but still just sufficiently to show the young lady that she knew more, and was quite ready, if asked, to place at her disposal her good advice and experience. The Count then had made good use of his time. Let him! for whatever reasons, whether out of hatred to Reinhold, out of jealousy (the ugly word was only too good in this case), out of miserable offended vanity, or only for the malicious satisfaction of himself and Carla, let him tell all Berlin to-morrow, as he had to-day told the inhabitants of the castle, what had happened. He would not certainly long have the pleasure of spreading about so precious a secret under the seal of mystery. The announcement of the engagement would soon enough break the seal, and could no longer be delayed. The post from Jasmund to Prora passed through Warnow at nine o'clock. There was just time. Elsa seated herself at the little table in the deep bow which was her favourite seat on account of the view from the window over the plain as far as the sea and Wissow Head, and wrote with flying pen a few heartfelt lines to her father. Neither she nor Reinhold had intended, since they were assured of each other's love, to do otherwise than wait patiently for brighter and happier days. But after what had happened she must be careful; there must be no gossip connected with the name of her father's daughter. No one could know that better, or feel it more deeply, than the dear kind father in whose righteous hands she now laid her righteous cause. She gave the letter into the care of an old and faithful servant, who, during the long absence of the owners, had been in charge of the castle, and now walked up and down her room in a strange, half-frightened, half-joyful, but wholly overpowering state of emotion. "Elsa von Werben--Reinhold Schmidt, Superintendent of Pilots. Betrothed. Berlin--Wissow." A Superintendent of Pilots! How odd! What is it exactly?--and Wissow! Does anybody know where Wissow is?--Wissow, ladies and gentlemen, is a little sandy peninsula, with about twenty houses, not one of which is a quarter the size of the shooting-box at Golmberg, or of one of the out-buildings of the ancestral castle of Golm, whose courtyard gate you pass on the road from Prora to Warnow. How extraordinary! Really! But she always had extraordinary taste!--and how wise of the Count to draw back in time from so unseemly a competition. He is said to be otherwise an agreeable man. That is always said afterwards. An officer of the reserve too. A la bonne heure! In that case the General's daughter could really no longer hesitate. And Elsa laughed and danced as she pictured to herself many well-known voices in this little concert, to which old Baroness Kniebreche beat time with her great black fan, but she started back as she skipped past the window, when a dazzling flash of lightning lit up the broad plain with a pale light, the Pölitz's farm lying there as clearly as in broad daylight, and at the same moment a long rolling peal of thunder made the windows rattle. And then it seemed as if an earthquake shook the very foundations of the castle. The tiles rattled from the high roof, shutters clapped to, doors banged, whole windows must have been blown out, as the wind moaned and whistled and howled round the walls and gables and through the joints and crevices. Running, hurrying, and calling resounded through the castle; steps approached her door. It was her aunt's elderly maid: "Would she come to her aunt? she was so dreadfully restless and excited, and it was impossible even for the young lady to think of sleep in such horrible weather." Elsa was ready at once. She wanted to go to her aunt to thank her for her kind consideration, and to beg her for her sake on no account to deprive herself of the rest which, after such a trying day, was so necessary to her. She said as much to the maid, who only shook her head and answered nothing, but conducted Elsa in silence to her lady's door.

Valerie came to meet Elsa at the door. Elsa was startled at the deadly-white, tear-stained face. She could only imagine that the shock of the tremendous thunderclap had increased her aunt's malady to this pitch; she begged her to calm herself; to allow herself to be put to bed; she would remain with her--the whole night. Her aunt would take courage when she saw how courageous she herself was, who certainly had sufficient cause for anxiety.

She led the tottering, trembling woman to the sofa, and would have rung for her maid, but the other caught her hand convulsively, and pulled her down by her on the seat. "No, no," she murmured, "not that; it is you I want; you must stay, but not because I am afraid of the storm--I fear something much worse than that."

She sprang up and began walking up and down, wringing her hands, through the large room, which was but dimly lighted by a lamp on the table.

"I cannot bear it any longer. Now or never is the time. I must speak out--I must--I must."

She suddenly threw herself at Elsa's feet, as if struck down by the thunder which just then pealed above them, and clasped her knees.

"It has been my hope and consolation all this time, to confess to you, so pure, so good! To free myself from the thraldom in which my tyrant holds me. To make the highest, greatest sacrifice that I can make of the one bright spot in this dark world--your love!"

"You will not lose my love," said Elsa, "whatever you may confide to me, that I swear to you!"

"Do not swear it; you cannot. See, I feel even now, how your dear hands tremble, how your whole body shakes, how you are struggling to keep calm, and as yet you have heard nothing."

"How can I be calm when you are so terribly excited?" answered Elsa. "Look, aunt, I have long felt that something lies between you and me, something more than the unhappy family dissensions, so far as I know them--a secret which you have not ventured to tell me. I have often and often longed to beg you to tell me all, but have never had the courage to do so, though I have reproached myself for not having done it. But lately it has seemed to me that you have been more reserved towards me than at first, and that has made me still more anxious. And I also had a secret on my mind, and did not venture to confess my love to you, notwithstanding that every hour I spend with you only makes me more certain that you--you above all others--would be just in the position to set aside the prejudice with which even my dear father is surrounded. Shall I confess it to you? Your relations with--with Signor Giraldi, however much you must have suffered and still must suffer from them--have seemed to me on this account to be comforting and encouraging. Whether you approve of my love or not, you will at least understand it, will be able to sympathise with what you must once have felt yourself, that one may love a man for himself alone, because one sees in him the ideal of all that appears to oneself to be worth loving. And now chance, if it is not wrong to speak of chance here, has snatched my secret from me. Take courage! Have confidence. Tell me all. You say it is the right moment, and it certainly is so. It must not be let slip. And now, dear aunt, rise up, and if I really am, as you said the first moment we met and now repeat again--your guardian angel, let me prove it--let me prove that in the midst of the happiness of my love for the best and noblest of men, I have the strength to free you, to restore to you the peace and joy for which your soul pines."

With gentle violence Elsa raised up her aunt, whose head had sunk upon her bosom, dried the tears on the lovely pale face, which seemed already somewhat calmer and more composed, threw her arms round her and made her lie down on the sofa, reseating herself on the stool by her side, after she had put the lamp out of the way on the console.

"I can only confess by the light of your dear eyes," said Valerie. "From any other my secret would creep back into my heart."

Outside the storm raged and thundered against the old castle, in long, unequal gusts, and whistled and howled round the walls, between the gables, as if wild with fury at meeting with resistance, and at this resistance defying its omnipotence.

"So will he rage," said Valerie, shuddering, "when he comes to-morrow and demands his victim, and she does not and will not follow him, if he does his worst, even if he annihilates her.

"Yes, Elsa, he is coming to-morrow; I found the letter when we came in. The diabolical scheme is ripe, which is to be the destruction of you, Ottomar--all of you. I myself only partly know this scheme. Hard as his heart is, he has yet discovered that my heart has gone from him--how much, how entirely, he does not know, he does not even suspect, or she whom he once loved as well as he is capable of loving, and who so passionately loved him, would certainly no longer be alive. Yes, my dearest Elsa, I must begin with this terrible confession, or you would not understand the worse things that remain for me to tell. You would look upon me as the most degraded of our sex; even your loving heart could not absolve me--if indeed it ever can do so!

"I loved him with an infinite, unholy love, the fiend, who to this day entraps all who come under his pernicious influence, and whom you must have known in the beauty and lustre of his youth, to conceive how even good women found it hard to resist his fascinations.

"I was not absolutely bad, but neither was I good--not in my heart at least, which longed eagerly for fuller joy; nor was my imagination so pure as not to be allured and captivated by the world and its glory. I may have been so unhappily constituted by nature, or the frivolity and luxury of the court life to which I was so early introduced may have corrupted my young heart, I do not know, but so it was that my heart and imagination were alike undisciplined and uncontrolled. How otherwise could it have been that the bride, whose wedding was to take place in a few weeks, fell desperately in love in one moment with a man whom she saw for the first time, and against whom, moreover, even her dulled conscience warned her, and that, in spite of all and of the utter hopelessness of this passion which she could not tear from her heart and--shame and misery!--with this passion for a stranger in her heart, she stood with her betrothed, in God's sight, before the altar, to plight him that troth which she had already broken in her heart, and which, indeed, she had already more than half resolved to break in reality.

"Do you shudder, my poor darling? I can tell you she had friends who would not have shuddered had they known! Yes, who knew it, and did not shudder, who, laughing, pointed to one who had already done so, and before whom no gentleman took off his hat the less respectfully, before whom the nobles of the land did not bow less low, and to whom learned men and artists did not the less render homage.

"Why should we not be allowed what was permitted to her? Were we less beautiful, less agreeable and clever? She borrowed from us the lustre which surrounded her. From whom did the fame of the Medician Court proceed, if not from us and such as we? So might we also allow ourselves the liberty, which she permitted herself behind the cloak she borrowed from us.

"And now occurred what I never for one moment believed possible, had never even thought of. My husband gave up his embassy, quitted the public service for good, and wished to live here on his property with me--to live for me. If the latter were not a mere form of words, it did not mean much at least to my mind. The fact is, he had, in his usual methodical way, made a regular programme for his whole life, and in it was laid down, that after he had served the State for a certain number of years he should marry and retire to his estates. He now intended to live for me as formerly for the State; fulfilling his duty with anxious care, without enthusiasm, without pleasure--marriage was to him a task which must be got over like any other.

"He had concluded and arranged everything before he confided it to me. I was horrified, rebellious, distracted, furious, and yet--dared not by look or word betray my feelings. There was only one faint consolation for me, that the mission on which Giraldi had been employed at our Court (our duchess was a Roman Catholic, you know) was ended, and he must at any rate return to Rome. We parted from each other with promises of eternal love, 'Even if we never see each other again,' I sobbed. 'We shall meet again,' said Giraldi, with that imperious smile that you know.

"I did not believe it. I was in despair. And with despair in my heart I arrived here.

"Was it really despair for the dreamed of happiness? Was it the soothing influence which the solemn neighbourhood of the sea, the melancholy solitude of the shore, exercised on my passionate heart? Was it that my better self was really getting the dominion at last? Little as I can say for myself, I may at least say this, that I took great pains to do my duty as the mistress of this house--the wealthy country lady. I tried even to love my husband, and there were moments when I thought I did love him. But only moments. I must admit that he was always and in all things a well-meaning man, who endeavoured to the utmost to act up to his favourite saying, 'Give every man his due,' so far as he understood it, and another woman would perhaps have been very happy with him. I was not, and could not be so. The profound difference between our characters could not be concealed, but seemed to show more clearly, the harder I tried to overcome it. He was extremely well-informed, I might even say learned, but with a want of sensibility which provoked me, and with a poverty of imagination which drove me to despair. Nothing was great, nothing was sublime to him. For him there was nothing heroic, nothing divine. I tried to enter into his prosaic view of the world, into his narrow-minded judgment of people and things. I was forced sometimes to admit that he was right, that the selfish motives which he discovered everywhere had in many cases played a part, had contributed to bring about this or that result. But what was there in this melancholy satisfaction of the intellect, in comparison with all the noble spiritual qualities which were thus left to lie fallow and perish miserably.

"I felt that I was deteriorating. That whatever blossoms my mind still bore, were withering as they came under the influence of this dry atmosphere in which he lived, in which he moved and spoke. I felt that in the dry sands of this unvarying commonplace life the roots of my mind were one after another dying down, that I began to hate this life, which was no life to me, I who had so loved life!--that I began to hate my husband, who imposed upon me this torturing existence in place of life.

"It could not last so. I had become a mere shadow of myself. The doctors shook their heads. Ah! if I had but died then. But I was still so young, I wanted to live. I swear to you, Elsa, that was all I wished for. In four such years of suffering one fancies one has learned to give up even the faintest glimmer and hope of happiness. Strange delusion! As if one could live without happiness; as if I could have done so, with the ardent, insatiable heart I had; as if I were not at that very time giving proof that I could not do it.

"But, truly, it is easy to see this on looking back, but when one looks forward, one does not see it.

"My husband naturally considered it his duty to follow the doctor's advice, and to set off on a journey with his young wife. Let me be silent over the splendid misery of that journey. It brought change, diversion, but neither peace nor happiness; at the utmost, it deadened for a moment the wretchedness that reigned uninterruptedly in my innermost heart, greatly as the young wife in her renovated beauty was admired in the society of all the Courts which we visited. I may boast that I victoriously withstood all the temptations with which I was surrounded; and yet not altogether. For if I did so--if I remained cold in presence of the passionate feelings which I roused in other hearts--if I was not touched by the love with which I inspired men whose worth I well knew, it was not conviction of the sacredness of marriage that guarded me; it was not pride; it was, although I knew it not, a deep, bitter grudge against fate which had denied me my happiness--that happiness of which I had dreamed. It was, in a word, the recollection of that great passion which filled my soul in my dreams at night, so that I saw my daily waking life only through its magic veil--the love which, unknown to myself, still filled my heart, like the aroma of attar of roses, which long after it is gone scents the crystal phial which it once filled.

"I discovered this when it was too late--when I had seen him again. It was not my fault. I had learnt from an apparently unquestionable source that he had for some years held an important post in South America, and that he was at that moment in the far West, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. A command from the Pope--or, as he said, his star--had brought him back. You will believe me, Elsa, that I speak the truth, that the agreement which it is said we made together was an invention; it is further said that I, whether by agreement or by chance, seized the cleverly-arranged or unhoped-for happiness with eager hands, and drank it down greedily.

"And I?

"I went that same evening on which we had met Giraldi at an entertainment at the French Ambassador's to my husband, and told him that I wished to return home--the next day. He had given no reason when he threw up his post and brought me here into this solitude, and I thought I might also keep silence on the reasons which took me from Rome and the world into solitude. Neither did he inquire. He had already seen--had, like all the world, perceived the extraordinary charm which was even more remarkable in the man who had ripened to such splendid maturity under a tropical sun, than in the fascinating youth of former days; he probably remembered what kind friends then no doubt had told him, and what in his pride and self-confidence he had certainly not believed. And now this confidence was not broken; but it was shaken. The past years, so empty and joyless, stood out before his startled eyes in a strange and suspicious light. All I had suffered and been deprived of must have come before him. But it was still not too late, in his eyes. I wished to do my duty apparently by flying from temptation. He accepted silently what in his opinion was a matter of course. We left the next morning, and went home.

"And now commenced a dark and fearful drama which I shudder to look upon, even now that the entangled threads have become clear before my eyes. We had curiously changed our parts. Whilst I, proud of the victory I had obtained over myself, held my head up and took a melancholy pleasure in the renunciation to which I doomed myself, he suffered more and more from the disquietude which had until now possessed me; he was tortured by longings after a happiness which I had resigned. He had married me because I was young, handsome, and brilliant; perhaps had also fancied at the time that he loved me, after his fashion. Now he loved me for the first time with all the passion of which he was capable, and which must be the more fatal to him, that he, to whom a calm bearing had always been the ideal of a gentleman, was ashamed of his passion, and would certainly give no expression to it; and, what was worse than all, he must see, or fancy he saw, that he was too late in treading the path which led to my heart--which perhaps even now would have led to it. It is so hard for a woman to shut her heart against the charm which the knowledge that she is loved sheds around her. I saw how he suffered. I suffered terribly under it; for I held it to be impossible that I could ever return his sentiments; yet I suffered with him, and pity is so near akin to love! If children had played around us, perhaps everything would have happened differently, and I truly believe that their gracious influence at this stage of our affairs would have brought about a happier ending. But as it was, the reckoning was not between father and mother, but always between man and wife, and childless marriages are only too fruitful a source of sorrowful home tragedies. And yet all would have gone, if not well, at least better in time, which gradually buries so many raging flames under its embers, had not my husband been taken possession of by an unlucky thought, which became a fixed idea. What had appeared to him, so long as he had not loved me, as a piece of wisdom and diplomatic reserve--namely, our leaving Rome--now appeared to him in the light of a shameful flight, a miserable cowardice, which he could never forgive himself, which I could never forgive him, and which, infatuated as he was, he now held to be the principal--the only reason, indeed--that I remained cold to him, whilst he was consumed with love. He could not, as usual, find any soothing, explanatory words for the agitated condition of his heart.

"I should be in the dark now as to this portion of my unhappy history had I not learnt the real circumstances from letters of your father, which my husband on his second departure from Rome left in his desk, and which afterwards were found by Giraldi and shown to me. It appeared from these letters that my husband confided everything to his friend, and had begged his advice especially with respect to the fatal plan with which he deluded himself. Your father advised most strongly against it; not that he doubted that I should be victorious in the struggle to which I was to be exposed--a Werben would always, and in all circumstances, do her duty--but because he took the whole thing for a romance, that might do very well in a French play, but was altogether out of place in the realities of German life, and particularly in the case of a German nobleman and his wife. If we had not found happiness in our marriage, he certainly deplored it with all his heart; but he knew of no other remedy than the determination not to depart from the good and right course; and should this means prove unavailing, there was nothing for a man to do but to accept in all humility the fate which he had assuredly prepared for himself, and bear it with dignity as inevitable. We were not sent on earth to be happy, but to do our duty.

"Oh, Elsa! with what sensations did I at that time read this letter, which I took to be the perfect expression of a mind which had forgotten all human emotions in the formalities of the service, and which revolted me the more as I had clung to him who could so write with true sisterly love, and believed myself beloved by him as by a brother. What terrible experiences were needed before I understood what great though bitter wisdom, and how much true love, was in these words!

"A second journey to Rome was announced to me, like all these resolutions, in the most courteous manner, but with a tacit assumption of my assent. It was not my fault that I also had meanwhile learnt to conceal my feelings. In the company of taciturn people even sympathetic minds become silenced at last, and then for ever. I saw beforehand what would happen--yes, I was determined that it should happen. I have not concealed from you the frivolous levity with which I approached the altar. The evil disposition of my young and half-corrupted heart had not been fulfilled. I had continued a better woman than I had believed myself--yes, I may say I had grown better in time. Now that all my honest efforts were fruitless, that I knew them to be slighted and misunderstood, that I saw fate insolently challenged by the man who should have been grateful to me for having preserved myself and him from it by such great sacrifices of my own heart--now I became worse than I had ever been--now I became truly bad. I scoffed in my inmost heart at the madman who strove to gather grapes from thorns; I secretly derided the vain fool who could imagine for a moment that he could prevail in the struggle with the noblest of mankind; I triumphed beforehand over his downfall.

"It is terrible to have to say all this to you; all the more terrible as it did not remain the mere fancy of a distorted imagination, but was all, all most horribly fulfilled."

Valerie, who sat crouched up on the sofa, hid her face shuddering in her hands. A cold shiver ran through her slender form. Elsa would willingly have begged her to leave off for that day, but she felt that she could not take the bitter cup from the lips of the unhappy woman, to whom it gave one drop of comfort that a sympathising human eye should at last look down into the depths of her misery.

She comforted her with tender words, gave her a glass of water, which the exhausted woman hastily drank with feverish lips, and then again seized Elsa's hand, which she had all along held tightly in hers, and went on with her sorrowful confession, whilst the storm howled without like a band of demons whose victim was trying to escape them from the gates of hell.

"Alas that I cannot relate further without offending your pure ears, as I have already troubled your pure mind. But it must be. What is bad cannot be expressed in good words; and from the moment when I again touched Rome's venerable soil everything in my life was for long, endless years soiled and tainted, until at last I looked almost with envy upon the poor women in the streets. I was in the hands of one who seemed to have risen from the bottomless pit to destroy both body and soul. And yet it was years and years before this knowledge began to dawn upon me; years before the abhorrence grew into secret rebellion, and if this rebellion expresses itself in action, as I hope and pray to God it may, it is you, you only, I have to thank. I owe it to the new life that I have drunk from your loving looks, to the courage with which your strong, noble love has inspired me, which without neglecting one single duty, has looked steadfastly through all impediments to its one lofty star. I owe it to my longing to win your love, to be worthy of it as far as lies within my power, as far as the deepest repentance may expiate the heaviest guilt. I might call it a sudden insanity that threw me into the arms of this terrible man, in other words, that brought me to my ruin; and many things conspired together, too, to dull my feelings and judgment; the long torture which I had borne, and borne in vain, the violence with which I had been torn from such a hard-won act of resignation, the madness of a passion which, after having so long been forcibly restrained, now overflowed all barriers; the unholy charm which guilt offers to an undisciplined mind! How many have fallen who had not such temptations! But that this insanity lasted so long! that I should have known I was mad! that I chose to be so! It all appears to me now like a dark dream, in spite of the golden sun of Italy which illuminated it, of the perfume of orange blossom which surrounded it, and of the gentle tides of the blue sea which flowed about it. My husband had, after a few months, given up the futile struggle; he had gone away, beaten, broken down, without even the strength to come to any decision, only giving me permission in writing to remain away as long as I pleased. Whether he hoped that this apparent magnanimity would touch me, or that his absence would appeal more strongly to my heart than his presence, that the separation would teach me what I might lose in him--what I had already lost--I do not know. I only know that I had nothing but scorn and derision for what I called his pitiful flight, without a shadow of pity for him, even if I thought of him at all, or of anything but of enjoying my freedom to its fullest extent. And had I wished to follow him, as I did not wish, I could not have done so. Even before he fled I was fettered to him from whom he fled, by the strongest chains by which a woman can be bound to the man of her choice. But what so often brings about a transformation in a woman's life, what leads even the most frivolous to reflection, and awakens in her nobler feelings, brought no repentance to me, even--terrible to say--no joy. I needed no pledge of his love; and it brought to him whose path I would have strewn with roses, only care and perplexity.

"He had had no trouble in convincing me that my condition must remain a profound secret to all the world. Our hope was that my husband would himself insist upon a divorce, and as we--thanks to the devilish ingenuity of that fearful man--had never openly violated public decorum, as my husband had gone of his own free will, he leaving me, not I him, the separation could only terminate in my--that is in our--favour. Our fates were now irrevocably joined.

"And now came a circumstance which--Oh, Elsa! Elsa! have pity on me! How can I tell you? We reckoned on, we hoped for, my husband's death. From Giraldi's spies--he has them all over the world--we heard that my husband was ill, then that his illness was taking a serious turn, at last that the doctors gave no hope, even if the end did not come immediately. We tremblingly awaited the messenger who should summon me to his sick-bed; we thought over what excuses I should make if I did not obey the call; but the messenger never came. But neither did that come for which we waited in more intense suspense, as my time drew ever nearer. Though indeed we should not have been easily found. We had hidden ourselves deep in the mountains in a lonely place between Amalfi and Salerno. My old Feldner was our only companion. The loveliest boy was born, and as soon as I was able to move, was left in the hands of the faithful woman. It was necessary again to show myself before the world, and talk in the drawing-rooms of Naples about Sicily, through which we had hurriedly passed, and where I was supposed to have spent the last few months. And not one pang of remorse, not one wish to hear of or see the innocent child, left up in the mountains! To say that I was mad is perhaps the right word!

"But my husband still lived, and news came from Feldner that travellers--acquaintances of ours--had passed through her mountain retreat, and that she had only escaped discovery by the merest chance. The faithful soul begged us to liberate her and the child from their isolation. She asked if I did not wish to see the dear little creature again. A queen would be proud of such a child!

"Intoxicated though I was with the poisonous draught of sinful passion which none knew better than he how to mix, the cry for help from the faithful woman pierced my obdurate heart. I wanted to see my child; I wanted to have it with me. It was needed to fulfil my happiness. Nothing short of a full, even overflowing happiness would now content me. He had to bring all the force of his powers of persuasion to keep me from a step which he assured me would overthrow all our carefully-arranged plans. 'And if you do not consider yourself,' he cried, 'whom such an open admission of your position would reduce to beggary, think of our son, who would become a beggar with you. His future depends upon our caution, our foresight, our prudence; but prudence enjoins us to leave him in concealment until everything is decided, even, as his present place of abode has been shown not to afford sufficient security, to remove him to deeper concealment. It is only a question of a short time, of a few weeks, perhaps days. Trust me in this, as you have hitherto trusted me in all things. Leave it to me; I have already considered and prepared everything.'

"He communicated his plan to me. We had visited Pœstum in the spring. The young and handsome guide who had conducted us over the ruins had left an agreeable impression on my mind, as well as the plump little wife whom he had lately brought home there. I had envied both these poor people their unconcealed happiness. 'Those are the people,' said Giraldi, 'to whom to entrust our Cesare. The young wife will think but little of such an addition to her cares, and the strong husband will be an admirable protector to the child. Moreover, the presence of a detachment of soldiers at Pœstum is sufficient to ensure his safety.' He silenced my doubts, set aside every objection, and went to carry out his plan--alone. I dared not at this moment, when a thousand suspicious eyes watched us, when we were assuredly surrounded by invisible spies, leave the town on any account.

"He was back by the evening of the next day. All had gone perfectly as arranged. The child was well; the good Panaris (that was the name of the guide) full of joy over the treasure confided to them, which to these poor people became naturally a real treasure.

"Quite different indeed was the account of Feldner, who had accompanied him on the expedition. She painted with the utmost horror the wilds they had passed through, and over whose burnt-up surface malaria breathed its poison, and the pale, fever-stricken countenances of the poor inhabitants in the ruinous, dirty huts. The Panaris, too, had been ready enough to undertake the charge of the child, but the man was not without many doubts, which he had secretly imparted to her. The brigands were just then gathered in unwonted force in the mountains, and in spite of the soldiers posted in various places, and of the military escorts which accompanied travellers from Salerno or Battipagha to Pœstum, robberies had taken place in the immediate neighbourhood of the ruins. He could the less answer absolutely for the safety of the child, as he was himself never for a moment sure that his own property, perhaps even his own life, was safe.

"Unfortunately, out of fear of Giraldi, Feldner only let out these warnings gradually and cautiously. I myself, who had only been to Pœstum in the spring, and seen the broad plains covered with tender green, and gleaming in the mildest sunshine, naturally looked upon one cause of this anxiety as exaggerated, and Giraldi laughed to scorn the other objections. 'At the worst,' he said, 'it is an attempt on the part of the Panaris to get higher pay, which moreover I am quite willing to give them; and do you buy a silk dress and a coral ornament from the Chiaja for your duenna, that is all she wants. Only patience for a few days!'

"And as if fate itself were bound to serve him, a few days later news came that my husband had breathed his last here in Warnow, and with the announcement of his death came a copy of his will.

"I was distracted; I could have wished the world to come to an end, when all the happiness for which I had hoped, in which I had already revelled, lay shattered before me. I swear to you, it is the one bright spot in the infernal darkness of my unhappy soul that I never thought of myself. I lived only for him, lied for him, intrigued for him, stifled the voice of nature for him. I would have lived in a hovel with him, and in the sweat of my brow worked for the daily bread of us both. I would--but let me keep silence upon what I would have done for him--the infamy is too great as it is.

"He smiled his sarcastic smile. He did not believe in love in a cottage. My husband's disbelief in all unselfish sentiments had revolted me; here I only saw the right to a demand which so finely-organised a nature made upon life; nay, must make if it would not lose any of the charm which surrounded it. But if the will forbade me, under penalty of disinheritance, to call the man I loved my husband before all the world, there was no such penalty attached to a shame of which he had never thought, it did not forbid me to recognise my child. I would have my child at once. I had so much at least to retrieve.

"Now, I cried, that we are denied the luxury of a legitimate position, now that we are driven back to the sources from which we have drawn so deeply without asking anyone's permission--to nature and love--not one link shall fail of the chain which nature and love can forge; now for the first time I feel how only the pledge of our love can make our bond complete and indestructible. Let us not lose one moment.

"A feverish impatience had taken possession of me, which he--and oh! how thankful I was to him--appeared fully to share. I see him now, pale and disturbed, pacing through the room, and then standing still and spurring on Feldner, who in the hurry could not collect the child's things, and myself even to greater haste.

"'We do not want to lose a moment,' he cried, 'and we are losing hours, which are perhaps irretrievable.'

"We were getting into the carriage (there was no railway then), which would take us by Battipaglia to Pœstum, when an old woman, who had been crouched on the steps of the hotel, hobbled up, and in the cool way of a Neapolitan beggar, pulled him back by the tail of his coat, just as he had his foot on the step.

"He turned unwillingly, and--I have tried a thousand times in vain to recall the particulars of this scene--Feldner and I must have been just then arranging ourselves in the carriage. I only know that when I looked round at him the old woman was disappearing round the corner of the hotel, with greater activity than I should have given her credit for, whilst he, with his back to us, was standing in the entrance of the hotel apparently reading a letter. He then came out again. 'I had another direction to give to the porter,' he said, as he sat down by us and pressed my hand with a smile, saying, 'Coraggio, anima mia! coraggio!'

"'Coraggio!' I answered tenderly, returning the pressure. His face was so pale, his eyes looked so gloomy, that he seemed to me to need more encouragement than I did.

"It was evening before we reached Battipaglia. The little place, from which travellers over the lonely plain were in the habit of taking their military escort, was in great excitement. A company of Bersaglieri had just marched hastily through, a second company was on its way from Salerno to Pœstum, a third was lying in wait for the robbers in the mountains. Such a measure had become really necessary. The robbers had swarmed before the very gates of Salerno, and for days past no one could venture out of Battipaglia into the country. From Pœstum no news had come for the same time, and the worst was feared for the poor dwellers there.

"An inexpressible terror came over me. The unhappy child in the midst of this universal distress, in the very centre of the horrors! It was in vain now that Giraldi attempted to calm me by arguing that the approach of the troops gave promise of safety; I would not, I could not listen to anything; I could say nothing but 'On! on!'

"The people said we should not get far, and in fact we had scarcely gone a mile before we came up with a large body of soldiers, whose young officer courteously but decidedly ordered us back. The carriage had passed the lines against the distinct order of the colonel, and we could go no farther, as the banditti had rendered the bridge over the Sele impracticable for carriages and horses; very likely at this moment there was fighting in the open field before Pœstum. To-morrow the roads would be safer than they had ever been before; we must have patience so long.

"No prayers, no supplications availed. Back to Battipaglia! The impossibility of reaching the child, the fear of losing it, perhaps of having already lost it, drove me almost frantic. For the first time Giraldi had lost his power over me. He left me to my despair in the miserable inn and wandered about out of doors. It was a fearful night!

"The next morning the roads were, as the officer had promised, free. He thought it his duty to bring us the news himself, advising us, however, to postpone to another time our romantic trip. We had wanted to see Pœstum yesterday by moonlight! Good God! It looked melancholy in Pœstum. The little hotel was a ruin, the house of the guide Panari destroyed, he himself dangerously wounded in the defence of a strange child, which had been entrusted to him, and which the banditti had carried off to the mountains. This had taken place unfortunately the evening before last, so that the robbers had had time to convey to a place of safety their prey, on which indeed they must set great store, as they had made the most tremendous efforts to attain it, and had put themselves in such evident danger to place it in safety. There was, however, still a hope of snatching their prey from them. The pursuit was hot, and the precautionary measures well laid out. The lady might for the present calm her compassionate heart, and moreover, even if the child were to be pitied, the unnatural parents who had placed their child in such danger deserved no pity. Who could tell that they had not themselves planned the robbery, the better to hide the living witness of their shame, and that the pursuit of their accomplices was more than inconvenient to them? Such things had happened before.

"Oh! Elsa I Elsa! when the young man spoke these words so unsuspiciously, I did not venture to look up for shame and horror; I had provoked this fate. I 'deserved no pity!' and yet--and yet----

"But there was yet a possibility of escaping from this hell of anguish. Bandits were almost daily brought in--men, women, and children! 'It is not our Cesare,' said Feldner. I---- Good God! I should not have known with certainty if it were my child. Feldner cried quietly to herself night after night, that she had been robbed of her heart's-blood, her sweet little Cesare. I forbade her to cry. I threatened to dismiss her. I would not endure that he who appeared to suffer so terribly under the blow should be still further distressed by her complaints. He had in no way given up hope; prisoners had reported that a certain Lazzaro Cecutti, one of their principal leaders, who had for reasons unknown to them conducted the actual robbery of the child, with two others who had fallen in the fight, and his mother, with whom he had sent the child into the mountains, could alone give any information as to the destination of the same. Why should not Lazzaro or old Barbara be taken prisoners, like so many others? But they were not taken.

"'They are too cunning,' said Giraldi; 'they will not let themselves be taken; but when the pursuit is over, and that will soon be, the ardour of our authorities dies quickly, they will emerge in some distant spot and demand the ransom, which is naturally the only thing they care for; and on that very account we may be easy about our child, they will treasure it as the apple of their eye. Everything for them depends upon the child.'

"'But how will they find us?' I asked; 'we who by your direction have never openly claimed the child, have never offered a reward for his restoration?'

"'Those are measures,' said Giraldi, 'which would only have drawn upon us the attention of the public and the officials; that is to say, would have made it more difficult for the robbers to come to us unnoticed. You do not know either the loquacity or the cunning of my country people. The Panaris have assuredly not kept their counsel, and Lazzaro, before he achieved the robbery, knew our address better even than the police authorities; and when Italian bandits want to get a ransom they can find their men, wherever they may be. And believe me, they will find us.'

"The pursuit came to an end, very quickly too, astonishingly so, the papers said. It was at an end, but Lazzaro and his mother appeared neither here nor elsewhere. No one talked any more about the affair, it was buried in profound silence; the silence of death! Lazzaro was dead--he must be dead--he and his mother, and--my child! They, wounded to the death, drawing out their last breath in some deep and lonely mountain glen; the child, whom they no doubt kept with them to the end, hungry and thirsty, perishing miserably.

"Giraldi himself had to give it up at last. Heaven, he trusted, would send compensation. But Heaven, who had seen our firstborn given over to be a prey to the fox and the eagle, would not confide a second to such unnatural parents. The one so ruthlessly sacrificed remained the only one.

"And here I anticipate my narrative by years, in saying, that I thank God it remained the only one. More, I shudder at the thought that this child of sin and shame may still be living, may one day step out from the darkness which has so long enveloped him, may appear before me and say, 'Here I am; Cesare, your son.' Oh! Elsa, Elsa, everything is crushed and destroyed in me. How can my feelings be simple and natural like other people's? How can I do other than shudder at the possibility of finding him again when I think to myself how I must find him, who has grown up amongst robbers and murderers? in whom I have no share, save that I bore him, in whose soul I have no part? The son who would only come to help his father to rivet again the worn-out chain at the very time when I was in the act of breaking the last link? He feels and knows this. And it is by no chance, therefore, that he now, at this very time, has again and again conjured up that terrible picture--ah! no one understands as he does that devilish art!--Cesare is not dead. Cesare lives; wandering about the world in lowly guise, shortly to throw off the peasant dress and stand before us in his bright beauty.

"And I am to believe him--I, who have long been convinced, with my faithful Feldner, that what the young officer had thrown out as conjecture and possibility, with soldierly bluntness, was the terrible truth. He had taken the unhappy child to the foot of the mountains in the wilds of Pœstum, from whose barren slopes the robbers descend on to the plain, that he might be carried off at any time, that is, as soon as I showed a serious intention of producing him before the world, before the right time came. He--he himself had thrown the prey to these villains. He had learnt from the woman who came to the carriage-door that the villainous plot was carried into execution, at the moment when he would have given anything not to have contrived it. And then it unfortunately happened that at that very time the raid against the robbers was taken in hand by the Government, but at any rate the crime remained undiscovered; he could still raise his insolent eyes to mine as before.

"It is terrible to have to relate this, and to feel that though it was years and years before my blindness was in some measure removed, and I began to estimate the depth of my misery, I still endured it so long. But however slight the bond that unites bad men, that between a thoroughly bad man and one who is not utterly lost to nobler impulses is almost unbreakable, especially when that other is a woman. If she has repented her sinful life, and would turn with horror and aversion from her destroyer, fear prevents it; and if fear is forgotten in the excess of sorrow, she is bound once more and for ever by the shame of having to confess that she has so long been the companion of the reprobate.

"Oh, Elsa! I have gone through all these horrible phases. I thank heaven and you, whom heaven has sent to me, that at last I have come to the end.

"When we came here in the autumn, my soul was filled with terror, like a criminal who has escaped with noiseless tread from his prison, and is terrified at the trembling of a leaf. I knew that the crisis was approaching on all sides, that a word, a look, might betray me, the more so that suspicion had certainly been roused in him. A sure sign of this was that he no longer trusted his accomplices. All our servants have always been such. Even my old Feldner had long been in his pay--apparently. She takes the wages of sin, with which he pays her betrayal of her mistress, and we give it to the poor. She says nothing to him but what we have agreed upon beforehand. But since we have been here, he no longer employs her. He must even have begun to suspect François, a crafty bad man, who had at first promised to be a particularly useful tool, and rightly. Whether Giraldi has offended him, or the clever Feldner has won him over, he has come over to us. But he also has no longer anything to tell. It seems that his last commission, to accompany and watch me here, was only a pretext to get him away from Berlin, where Giraldi is weaving the last meshes of his net. Let him. I fear him and his devilish arts no longer, now that an angel has spread its pure wings over me.

"He has long lied to me as he has to all the world. The last time that he divulged his plans to me, and then only in part, was on the morning after my arrival in Berlin, a few minutes before I saw your dear face for the first time. I may not, and will not importune you with the repulsive details; it is enough for you to know, that with the courage to oppose him, I have also the power to frustrate his plans.

"The net, into the toils of which he thinks to bring you, will close around his own guilty head. When he comes to me to-morrow, sneering at the intelligence which the Count and Carla will hasten to impart to him, that Elsa von Werben has forfeited her inheritance, he shall have his answer, and if he announces in triumph that Ottomar has also returned to his forsaken love, and equally forfeits his inheritance, he shall not long await his answer; and if with lips trembling with passion he asks how I, his tool, his slave, have dared to rebel against my lord and master, I will seize you by the hand and say, 'Away from me, tempter! back into the darkness of your hell, Satan! before this angel of light!'"

With the last words, Valerie had slipped from the sofa to Elsa's feet, her weeping face hidden in her lap, and kissing her hands and dress in an excess of agitation, which only too clearly proved what terrible anguish the dreadful confession had cost her, with what rapture her poor heart, which so thirsted for comfort, was now filled. It was long before Elsa could in any degree calm her, only at last through the consideration that she must gather up all her strength for the interview with Giraldi next day, and that a few hours' sleep after such a day was indispensable. She would remain with her. She must allow her good angel to watch even over her slumbers.

She got the exhausted, broken-down woman to bed. It was long before her quicker breathing showed that Nature had asserted her rights. But at last she lay really asleep. Elsa sat by the bed, and gazed with deep sympathy upon that still lovely, noble, deathly-white face.

And then she thought of him whose image during her aunt's story had ever stood out in her mind, as if it were to him and not to her that the confession was being made. As if he and not she had here to decide, to judge, and to absolve. And as another tremendous clap of thunder now shook the old castle, and the sleeper moaned in terror, she folded her hands, not in fear, but in thankful emotion that whilst her lover was risking his dear life to save the lives of others, she was also permitted to pilot a human soul out of the storm of passion and sin into the haven of love, and that their works of salvation would succeed for the sake of their mutual love.

CHAPTER V.

The storm was raging that night through the straight streets of Berlin also.

Let it! What does one more discomfort signify to us, as we hurry along the pavement? We are accustomed to discomforts of every sort; and if a tile or a slate falls down occasionally at our feet, we have not been struck yet, thank goodness! And if a chimney should be blown down, or a new house fall in, or anything of that sort, we shall read about it in the papers to-morrow. We have weightier matters to consider, truly! The storm which raged through the Chambers to-day during the debates, will also unroof many a fine edifice on the Stock Exchange in quite another fashion, and many a great house which appeared this morning to stand firm enough, and command the market, will be shattered to its foundations, and will drag others down with it to disgraceful failure. Like this one here for instance; it is just finished after years of labour, having cost untold sums, and its magnificence having roused the astonishment of everybody who was favoured with a view of it, and the eager curiosity of the many who were obliged to content themselves with a sight of the lofty scaffolding. Was it not to be opened to-night with a great ball, of which for the last fortnight such wonders have been related? To be sure! And it is really a curious coincidence that it should take place just to-day, when the lightning has struck the neighbouring houses, that stand upon the same insecure foundations, have been erected from the same disgraceful materials, and are in every respect the same miserable swindle from basement to roof. I should not like to stand in that man's shoes.

Nor I either, my dear friend, but, believe me, our virtuous indignation, if he could be aware of it, would only be an additional satisfaction to this man. He has landed his goods in safety. What does it matter to him if you, or I, or anybody be drowned in the rushing stream from which there is no escape except for him and such as him? Who asked us to venture into the water? You thought, perhaps, that if he were not prevented from giving this feast by the black Care that sits behind him, he must be so by very shame, especially today when he and the whole brood of them have been branded with the mark of Cain upon their brows. And now look I look up at this splendid façade, see how the light from the innumerable wax candles streams through the great plate-glass windows, with their crimson silk hangings, and shines like daylight upon us out here in the dark! No contemptible gas except in the passages and corridors! That is how it is in the Emperor's palace, and he must have the same. That splendid awning before the door, which is being blown about by the wind, the Brussels carpet which is laid in the dirt of the street from the door to the carriages, will be thrown into the dust-hole to-morrow in rags and tatters. Why not? That is what they are for. But come--the police are already beginning to look indignantly at us. They suspect our wicked doubts about the sacred rights of order, which consist in plate-glass windows, marble doorways, fringed awnings, and Brussels carpets. Or have you got a card of invitation like Justus Anders there, who is lost in wonder over the varnished boots which so seldom deck his feet, and is in trouble about his new hat, with handsome Antonio following as his aide-de-camp, hastening in without noticing us his best friends; but do not look morosely at him, and hurl no anathemas at him out of the depths of your injured, democratic conscience. The poet is the equal of the king, and the artist must be the equal of the speculator. Those are laws which we must respect. And now let us go and drink a glass to Lasker's health. Only this one more carriage? Oh! you rogue! because there are ladies' dresses--it serves you right! Old Kniebreche. Sauve qui peut!

The old Baroness was of course there. She was everywhere, it was said, where anything was to be seen. She had been present at the creation of the world, and would assist at its end. She had first intended to let Ottomar get her an invitation, but eventually entrusted the honour to Herr von Wallbach. The dissension between the Werbens and the Wallbachs was no longer a secret, at least from her. Dear Giraldi, who was, however, discretion itself, and really only repeated what could absolutely no longer be concealed, had told her something--too terrible, but still not so terrible as what that good Wallbach, who had fetched her in his carriage, had related to her on the way.

"Poor, poor Carla! Absolutely deserted on account of a pretty girl of no family, whom his former mistress had had to intercede with for him. Wallbach was going to show her at this very ball the principal performer in this pretty story, a dancer from an obscure theatre. Wallbach must be sure to remember! She was so curious to see this person. In such an utter scandal, it was impossible to be too careful about the most trifling details. And if dear Carla had tried to comfort herself in her grief--of course, my dear Wallbach, what was she to do? It speaks for itself. And she had the dear Count there under her very hand! Oh! Mon Dieu! How I have been deceived in Ottomar, but they have, none of them, been good for anything. I knew his grandfather, and even saw his great grandfather when I was a little girl. But the old gentleman would turn in his grave if he knew what his great-grandchildren were doing. And Elsa--my dear Wallbach, I suppose I must believe that story, but it is a strong measure for a General's daughter. As to Ottomar drawing lots of bills of exchange--I know whole regiments who do it; but there I stop--further than that I cannot go, unless I heard it from his own lips."

"But, my dear lady, I conjure you by all that is sacred, be discreet."

"Do you take me for a baby--for a goose, for I don't know what? You have no business to talk like that to old Kniebreche, who might be your grandmother. Give me your arm, and point out a few interesting people. Will Lasker be here, too? What do you say? One ought not to talk of the hangman.-- What is it to me if tag and rag fall out together? But our worthy host--do point him out to me--the big, broad-shouldered man with the fine forehead and full chin? A fine-looking man. Bring him to me at once!"

Philip was charmed, at last and in his own house, to become personally acquainted with a lady who was reckoned amongst the few celebrities in which Berlin rejoices. Now, for the first time, he could venture to say that his entertainment had not proved a failure. Would her ladyship allow him the honour of conducting her to the ball-room? Unfortunately he had not been able to restrain any longer the young people's desire to begin dancing, or he would certainly have asked her ladyship to have led the polonaise with him. He flattered himself that she would not feel herself too isolated at his house, though several illustrious names would not appear in the list of those present; as, for instance, that of Count Golm. One could not have everything and everybody at once. He was, and always had been, a modest man; and that "a king's glory was his state, and our glory was the labour of our hands," was a saying which he had, all his life, held to, and hoped to continue to do so. Were the pillars which supported the orchestra real marble? Certainly. He was the son of a worker in marble. He might say that everything her ladyship saw here was real, save, perhaps, a little of the colour on the ladies' cheeks, about which, for his part, he had secret doubts; and the nobility of a few barons and baronesses, which might also seem a little doubtful to her ladyship. The Stock Exchange seemed nowadays to be all-powerful, but after all, however long the train might be, and whatever quantity of diamonds were worn in the hair, or sewn on the dress, what a difference there was between Baroness Kniebreche and Baroness---- He would name no names, but a difference there must always be. Would her ladyship permit him to offer her some refreshments? they were here close by.

"Quite a presentable man for a parvenu," whispered Baroness Kniebreche into the ear of Baroness von Holzweg, whom she met in the refreshment-room in the midst of a group of great ladies. "He understands the art of living, it must be allowed. There is not a more magnificent room in Berlin, even at his Majesty's, only here it is much more comfortable. What a capital idea to put a refreshment-room so close to the ball-room, and such good things too. What have you got there, my dear! Oyster patties? Delicious! Young man, bring some oyster patties and a glass of Chateau Yquem. How well that sort of man understands bringing people together. Of course there are all the tag and rag here--actors, dancers, heaven knows what! But if one does not look too closely one might imagine oneself at a court ball. The ballroom absolutely swarms with guardsmen. Well, young people, I cannot blame you; you are cocks of the walk here. À propos, what brought you here, dear Baroness?"

"Quite between ourselves, dear Baroness," whispered Baroness Holzweg.

"Of course between ourselves!" cried Baroness Kniebreche.

"Prince Wladimir is expected to be here for a moment."

"'You don't say so! Of course you and your niece could not fail. But take care! The 'illustrious lovers' are getting quite common. Come, come, I meant no harm; I readily allow the greatest latitude in the upper circles, if only the proprieties are observed as regards the lower ranks. But such things are going on now, dear Baroness--such things!"

And Baroness Kniebreche began waving her gigantic fan with much energy.

"May I venture to ask, dear Baroness?" whispered Baroness Holzweg, drawing nearer, in curiosity.

"Well, quite between ourselves, you know, dear Baroness."

"How can you imagine, dear Baroness--"

The heads of the two old ladies disappeared for a long time behind the black fan.

"And these are all facts, dear Baroness?"

"Absolute facts. I have them from Wallbach, who is generally discretion itself--but there are limits to everything. Is not that him there behind the door? Actually! and talking to Signor Giraldi. I must go there. That good man absolutely hears the grass grow."

The old lady got up with difficulty, and rustled off, with her glass to her half-blind eyes, towards the two gentlemen, every one retreating, scared, before the black fan.

Baroness Holzweg remained sitting, with an evil smile upon her pale, puffy face.

"Ah!" she murmured, "how pleased Agnes will be. The haughty Herr von Werben, who will not dance with her, because he can understand either secret or open engagements, but not those that cannot be made public! And his arrogant sister, whom he has forbidden to have anything to do with Agnes, and who has now taken up with a merchant-captain. Charming!"

"What is amusing you so, my dear?" asked Frau von Pusterhausen, coming back again to her friend. "You were talking such secrets with Baroness Kniebreche, and I could not get away from Madame Veitel, or whatever she calls herself. She chatters and chatters--I only heard a few words--you seemed to be talking about the Werbens? Am I right? And can you tell me what it was about?"

"But it remains between ourselves, my dear?"

"You may be quite easy, my dear."

And the two ladies put their heads together, one maliciously listening, the other spitefully retailing what she had herself just heard.

Giraldi, after he had wandered through the rooms for half an hour, met Herr von Wallbach, who had luckily got away from the Baroness.

"I was just going," he said; "the heat, the noise, the everlasting talk about Lasker----"

Herr von Wallbach passed his hand over his bald forehead with a gentle sigh. "To be sure," he said, "Lasker! it is a terrible blow. Such a splendid business. We shall never recover the blow, although he has not directly attacked us. It is the beginning of the end, believe me."

"I do not think it looks so bad," said Giraldi. "It is only the first shock; our Ministers have certainly behaved miserably, the mob will triumph, but the reaction cannot be long in coming. They will find that the sun of radicalism, which shines so brightly just now, is itself not without a flaw. The Government, if only to anger the opposition, will guarantee the interest for a sufficient loan for a time, and probably afterwards take over the whole business. The promoters must have acted worse than stupidly if a good slice does not fall to their share, amongst others to our friend the Count."

"Nevertheless we--I mean the Warnow trustees--may have to wait a long time for the payment of the second instalment," said Herr von Wallbach thoughtfully.

"I am certain of that," answered Giraldi. "You may thank your forbearance, which has lasted until the shares with which you paid him have gone down so far. If I had only been listened to, he must have paid the whole million at once, when the shares stood at seventy-five; it would have been possible, and he would still have retained nearly half a million."

"Yes, true," said Herr von Wallbach, "it has again been proved that you are the best financier amongst us. It is lucky that we got the first instalment. The money, if all happens as you say, is as good as the Baroness's property already; but, nevertheless, we must one of these days--I wanted to remind you of that--meet once more, as a matter of form, to receive your report. You have still got the money at Haselow's?"

"Where else?"

"I only mention it because we left the investment absolutely to you. I wish to heaven the time had already come when I was quit of the whole thing. At any rate I shall make Schieler represent me at the trustees' meeting. When a man is on the point of breaking with the son, he cannot very well be on friendly terms with the father."

"Pay Ottomar's bills to-morrow; close one eye to certain mistakes in the signatures which must be amongst them--how should he have managed otherwise?--shut the other to the fair Ferdinanda, and everything remains as it was."

"Do not joke about it. At the best there will be a fearful scandal."

"Better too early than too late. And besides, if the public hear of the new engagement at the same time that they hear of the breaking off of the other, all will be well again."

Herr von Wallbach looked very thoughtful.

"Since this morning, since that terrible speech," he said, "the Count's position has become much worse. I don't know what will become of him now."

"Pardon me," answered Giraldi; "to my mind the affair looks quite different. The respite is an immense gain for the Count. There are so many chances. The shares may go up again, or the powerful hand which enabled him to pay the first instalment may be held out to him again. If it is not, why, the trustees must agree to a compromise--say twenty-five per cent. off; that is to say, the Count can pay up seventy-five. And after all he has always got the entailed estates."

"True, true," said Herr von Wallbach; "that would always remain to him."

He passed his hand over his forehead.

"Have you seen Werben yet?"

"He will hardly come. He is more agreeably employed. Bertalda has again lent her house to the loving couple, and is dancing away the sorrows of her young widowhood. The polka is over. I will beg for a few more details from the communicative little thing, in case they may be of use to you. I shall see you perhaps to-morrow. For to-day, Addio."

Giraldi turned away at the very moment that Baroness Kniebreche came up, and slipped into the ball-room, making as he passed a sign to Bertalda, whom he met on the arm of a very smart officer. Bertalda dismissed her partner, and soon overtook Giraldi, who had passed into one of the less-crowded side-rooms.

"Well!" he asked, sitting down, and inviting Bertalda by a gesture to take a place by him, "did you get the money, child!"

"Yes, and I am extremely obliged to you. I was really in great need of it. My poor brother----"

"I do not want to know what you did with the money. So long as you oblige me, that is sufficient. The important point is, are they happy at last?"

The girl coloured. "I really did my best," she said hesitatingly.

"She never came?" asked Giraldi vehemently.

"Oh yes! I had told her so much about her brother's ball, and----"

"Your dress--and so forth."

"Yes, that also. But it was not needed. I saw in her eyes that she could not hold out any longer, and was delighted that I had given her such a suitable opportunity. She came, too, half an hour before the time, and found everything very charming, just as it was the first time she was there, in November, and helped me to dress, and--well, one knows what it is when a girl, who is really in love, is waiting for her lover. A ring was heard. 'Who can that be?' said I. 'Perhaps it is Herr von Werben,' said Johanna, who naturally knows all about it. 'What brings him here to-day? Perhaps a bouquet; he is always so attentive,' said Johanna. She turned white and red in one moment, and trembled from head to foot, then fell upon my neck and sobbed, 'No, no, I have sworn it;' and before I could turn round myself, she was out of the room, without hat or cloak, down the stairs, and into the carriage, which was waiting at the door--br-r-r!--and she was gone. Next time she will not run away, I am certain of that."

"Next time," cried Giraldi, with scarcely restrained fury, "as if I could wait a hundred years. I had so set my hopes on it. Made so much of it to him. How did he take it?"

"He was frantic. I had to spend half an hour in consoling him. There never was anything like it. I really think he will do himself a mischief, if he doesn't get the girl. It is no joke, I can tell you, to deal with them both. If I were not so fond of Werben, and so sorry for poor Ferdinanda, I would not do it for all the money in the world."

"Did not he want to come here with you?"

"He is lying full length on my sofa and would listen to nothing. But I think he will come still. An hour or so of that sort of thing gets tiresome, here it is delightful. There is the quadrille beginning, and here comes my partner; may I----"

"Yes, go; and if you see him, tell him that I expect him to-morrow morning between nine and ten. He will know why."

"I have been looking for you everywhere, Fräulein Bertalda."

The black-haired young dandy carried off his charming, tastefully-dressed partner, who smilingly took his arm, blowing a kiss to Giraldi over her shoulder as she went.

Giraldi remained seated. While the stream of gaiety rolled uninterruptedly around him, he could snatch a few minutes to think over his position. It was by no means so prosperous as it had been a few days ago. Since midday he had had to give up all hope of the second instalment upon which he had counted at least in part. He had moreover reckoned with absolute certainty, that to-day the net which he had woven with such untiring perseverance would entangle Ottomar and Ferdinanda. He would have made better use of the interesting facts than Antonio had done about the rendezvous in the park. Ottomar's and Carla's engagement had been the consequence of that--this would have been the cause of the breaking off of that same engagement. Who could now blame Ottomar if, irritated by the girl's absurd prudery, frantic and despairing, he returned to Carla--to Carla, who loved him as much as she was capable of loving any one, and, frivolous as she was, would, for the mere sake of change, turn back from the new love to the old? And had not his conversation with Herr von Wallbach just now shown him that there were at any rate waverings in that quarter as to whether matters should be allowed to come to extremities? Herr von Wallbach had from the first declared that he did unfortunately share Giraldi's "suspicion" that there had been some ugly circumstances connected with Ottomar's continual drawing of bills of exchange, but that he would never directly interfere upon that point himself. If this suspicion should be justified--possibly at the next final settlement of the trustee business--he should of course be obliged to take notice of it; all the more in proportion to the extent to which the report might already have spread, but still he should only do so to express his sorrow and his conviction that such ugly rumours must disappear as absolutely as they had arisen mysteriously. On the other hand, if any positive proof appeared of the relations that Giraldi maintained still existed between Ottomar and Ferdinanda, he--Wallbach--was quite determined to make the proper use of it on his sister's account, to whom such a rivalry must, in the long run, be disagreeable. But this positive proof was still not procurable. There remained the affair of the bills of exchange! And if Ottomar came to grief to-morrow? and his proud father took the burden upon himself to avert the fearful disgrace which would recoil upon the whole family? He indeed knew the truth; but could he in that case speak? Would he not have to look on silently, while the father and son settled the matter amicably between them? Twenty thousand thalers indeed would not be so easily procured; but in such a case impossibilities might be overcome, and the General would be sure to have good and powerful friends. At the worst, if Baroness Kniebreche and the others who had been let into the secret should have too completely broken the sacred seal of confidence, there might be two or three duels, which would just suit Ottomar, who had laughingly asserted the other day that he should soon have made up his dozen!

A duel between him and Herr von Wallbach indeed! That would be decisive.

Only Herr von Wallbach, whose nerves were always a little unsteady, was thinking of anything but a duel. How to provoke Ottomar against him?

There would be difficulty about that. It would be necessary to speak more plainly, to mix himself up more directly in the business than before, and it had been his well-weighed decision not to let the mask fall, until----

The Italian's face grew still darker as he sat there brooding and meditating, his head lightly resting on his gloved right hand, his crush-hat on his knees, while from time to time joyous couples hastened past him to the ball-room, where they were still being summoned to the quadrille, which was more difficult to arrange now on account of the number of dancers.

If Valerie to-morrow, as he still hoped, agreed to everything, as she had always hitherto done, the mine could then, before it was fired, be so deeply laid that not one stone upon another should remain of the edifice of the Werbens' prosperity; the very bones even of the hated race should be scattered here and there through the air.

But if she opposed him? If, after seven and twenty years of dumb submission, she should rebel? and not now, and for once only, but for ever, should refuse him obedience? If she should appear as the mistress and superior? Well, she would do so at her peril! He was prepared for it too. The time for temporising, waiting, diplomatising, would be over at once; there would only be a very plain, very clearly-expressed question: Yes, or no? But she would never have the courage. And she was welcome to hate him, if only she feared and obeyed him.

A slight noise near him made him look up, and he started as he met the fiery black eyes of his young countryman.

"Eccolo!" cried Giraldi, stretching out his hand with his most bewitching smile; "how did you get here, my boy!"

"There was a lack of dancing-men," answered Antonio, pressing the offered hand to his heart; "the maestro was desired to bring a few young artists with him, and was good enough to think of me."

"And why are you not dancing?"

"I have not the happiness of being acquainted with so many beautiful young ladies as Eccellenza."

Giraldi smiled, whilst he turned over in his own mind whether Antonio could have recognised in Bertalda the veiled lady who came to see Ferdinanda. It was extremely improbable, but he must give some explanation of his intimate conversation with the pretty girl.

"Do you envy me my happiness, Antonio?" he asked.

"I do not grudge Eccellenza his happiness. Who can deserve it better?" answered Antonio, with fawning humility.

"And since you are modest, you will be happier than all the gold in the world can make me. You are young and handsome, and--you love; and that your love may be crowned with success, you have but to leave it to me and Brother Ambrosio. We are both busy on your behalf. Have a little patience only, and your probation will be ended, and you will have everything your heart can wish for--yes, more than you have dreamed of in your wildest dreams; but, above all, revenge--the most brilliant, triumphant, heart-stirring revenge--upon your enemy! I swear it to you by the Sacred Heart and the Holy Virgin!" The two Italians crossed themselves. "And now, my boy, I will talk to you in a few days. For to-day forget the cares of love, and pluck the rose of pleasure, without wounding yourself with the thorns."

He pointed towards the ball-room, again pressed Antonio's hand, and went.

The young man looked after him with a gloomy brow, as he slowly walked away. He had never for a moment doubted that the charming young girl whom he had seen talking so earnestly and familiarly to the signor, was the same whom he had met that evening in the dusk--that is to say, the same who had at one time repeatedly visited Ferdinanda; he knew her height and figure so well. She might be his mistress--well, but then what had she to do with Ferdinanda? Why had he not told him the real state of the case? Why did he not tell him the lady's name today? Why had he passed as quickly as possible to another subject--or rather had only repeated the same fine speeches with which he had so often flattered his confiding companion, although to this day not one of his promises had come true? And were these to suffice him? Was he to prolong his miserable life for this--he whom the clever signor had long ceased to trust? The signor had better beware of a person named Antonio Michele, who, when the signor had sworn by the Sacred Heart and the Holy Virgin, had also taken an oath which stood in the closest connection with that of the signor. There was the signor's lady. He would not approach her directly--Antonio Michele was not such a fool--but he would try and find out her name, which could not be very difficult; and, above all, he would not lose sight of her.

Meanwhile Giraldi had wandered farther through the over-crowded rooms, looking round him from time to time to see if he could discover Ottomar, uncertain whether he wished to do so, or whether he should wait for him, whether it would not be better to go away now and leave things to take their course. The train for Sundin started at one o'clock. It was now twelve; he had still half an hour. Half an hour! Half a minute would have been enough generally for him to decide the most weighty matters. But a man grew stupid from dealing with fools. And now that boy also must get in his way!

The sudden and quite unexpected meeting with Antonio had troubled Giraldi greatly. He had not thought about the young man for a long time; he had almost forgotten him, as he did all those whom he did not require immediately, or might not require again, for the furtherance of his plans. He required Antonio no longer. For the net which he was weaving for Ottomar and Ferdinanda, Bertalda was a much more accommodating and convenient tool. About Reinhold and Elsa he had long known all that he wished to know; and over the ardour with which at first he had followed up the idea of making out the handsome young man to be the son who should restore the already shaken relations between him and Valerie, he had himself smiled since. If Brother Ambrosio, indeed, had entered willingly into the affair--if by his hints to Valerie he had awakened her longing, if not hope, for the lost son! But the experiment had entirely failed; it had even rather had the contrary result, and had shown him more clearly than ever that her heart was more and more, perhaps was entirely, turned against him. And even if, perhaps under other circumstances, he returned to his plan, there was no use thinking any more of Antonio, against whom Valerie's suspicions had once been roused. She would not now believe in the strongest proof, to say nothing of a more or less well-invented fiction. And it was for this, for this hollow mockery, that he had inspired that passionate spirit with brilliant hopes and ambitious dreams, which must soon prove themselves an empty nothing, in which the young man himself perhaps no longer believed. There was sometimes a wild glare in the black eyes that had suggested to him that the young man would sooner or later go mad--perhaps was already so; and at the moment in which he swore to him that he should be revenged upon his mortal enemy, a smile had passed like a flash across his usually firm-set lips, which only admitted of one interpretation. If he ever learnt that the man who had promised to help him to gain the woman he loved had driven her into the arms of his rival, would it not be well while it was yet time to give the murderous weapon another direction--the right direction--to the heart of their mutual enemy? To say to Antonio, "I must confess to you, my son, that what you have above all things feared is true--the woman you love is now in his arms. I could not prevent it. Kill me! Or, if you would avenge yourself and me, keep your dagger ready--I know you always carry it with you. In a few minutes he will be here, still intoxicated with his happiness. Strike him! strike him down!"

Giraldi had stood leaning against the door-post, lost in his bloodthirsty fancies as in a dream, looking with fixed eyes upon the throng, without seeing anything. Suddenly he started. There in front of him, only separated by the width of the room, was Ottomar. He was talking to one or two other officers, and still had his back to him. He could still get away through the door against which he was leaning into the next room, and out of the house. That would be best. After all his arrangements were made, the manager might give up the stage to his puppets. What need was there of a dagger in this domestic drama? A few dishonoured bills, a good deal of gossip, truth cunningly mixed with falsehood and cleverly insinuated in society, and the wished-for result could not be long in coming, even if one or other of the wires failed in its effect. "To be too busy is some danger," as Hamlet says over the body of Polonius.

And Giraldi slipped back into the room from which he had come, and, passing through some side-rooms and down the brilliantly-lighted marble staircase, gained the vestibule and cloak-room.

Some guests were still arriving--a few ladies who to judge from their remarks, had been kept late in the ballet, and an elderly gentleman, who took off his fur coat whilst the servant was helping Giraldi on with his. The Italian hastily turned up his collar, but the other had already recognised him, and stopped him as he was going.

"What, Signor Giraldi! Are you going already?"

"I am tired to death. Councillor, and the heat and noise upstairs are amazing."

"I have already been three times to-day to your house in vain. I must talk to you at least for a moment. What do you think of it, my dear friend--what do you think of it?"

"Of what?"

The Councillor almost let his crush-hat fall. "Of what? Good heavens! Is it possible to talk about anything to-day except this abominable speech?"

"It appears not," said Giraldi. "Every other man and every fourth lady is talking about it upstairs. Fortunately it does not concern me."

"Not directly," said the Councillor eagerly, "but indirectly. How clever you have been again. The only man who would not hear of a postponement of the date of payment of the second half of the purchase-money. You were only too right. The Count is ruined. He will never pay the second half."

"One must reconcile oneself to the inevitable."

"Very philosophical! But indeed with your genius for finance, you will soon make up for it. I only heard to-day that you--I presume on the part of the Baroness, but it is the same thing--had lent the Count the half million with which he----"

Giraldi's brows met together like a thundercloud.

"Had the Count been talking--against his word of honour?"

"The Count! the Count!" cried the Councillor. "As if he troubled himself about anything. He throws his shares into the market, depreciates their value, and in short amuses himself. I regret, by every hair on my head, that we ever had anything to do with a fine gentleman! Lübbener----"

"Ah!" said Giraldi.

"Of course, Lübbener," continued the Councillor, "he no doubt only acted in the interests of the railway, when he paid you this afternoon the half million of the mortgage, after you had declared your fixed resolution in any other case to move for an immediate public sale. I cannot blame you either for wishing to get back at once money which seemed in such danger; but it is hard when friends and foes alike work for our ruin----"

"I do not consider Lübbener's finances by any means exhausted."

"Because--pardon me, my dear sir,--this supposition suits you; I can assure you I was with him a quarter of an hour after you had finished your business with him. He was furious. He said it had done for him, and for our whole enterprise. Lasker's speech this morning--shares went down twenty per cent.; half a million to pay this afternoon, for which he was not in the least prepared--it was the beginning of the end----"

"Just what Herr von Wallbach said," said Giraldi. "But pardon me, Councillor, it is rather warm here----"

"You will not come up again!"

"On no account."

"Perhaps you are right," said the Councillor. "I would go with you if it were not for Lübbener, who is sure to be up there----"

"I did not see him."

"You must have overlooked our little friend. I wanted to tell him something that I have just heard from the Minister who sent for me, and has only just set me free, and which I hope may be useful to him in tomorrow's battle."

"Then I will take leave of you. I am really tired to death."

The Councillor had not yet let go the button of Giraldi's coat. Through the comparative silence of these downstairs rooms sounded from above the wild strains of a furious waltz, and the dumb rush and sweep of the dancers, whose whirling steps made the magnificent building tremble as if with ague.

"They are dancing over a volcano," said the Councillor in a low voice. "Believe me, he cannot hold out; it is impossible. We have been obliged to pay him with shares, of course, like all the world. How he is to meet his engagements now that our shares have fallen to twenty--heaven only knows. I calculate that the man will be ruined in three weeks at the latest, and we with him."

"I regret it extremely, but if the world were coming to an end in half an hour, I should go to bed now."

The Councillor let go the button almost terrified. Such a wicked look had shot out of Giraldi's great black eyes, although he had spoken with the tired smile of a completely worn-out man.

"One would think he might play an active part in the downfall of the world," murmured the Councillor, as he brushed up his short, dry hair before the big looking-glass. "Strange what odd ideas come into my head when I am with that man! Such calmness at such a moment! He does business to the extent of half a million, of which no human soul is aware, loses another half million, and--goes to bed! Mysterious man!"

The Councillor put his brush in his pocket, pulled out once more his white tie, seized his crush-hat, and was on the point of leaving the cloak-room, when another guest stepped hastily in, and throwing his fur coat on the table, called to the servant, in a voice apparently trembling with haste, "Be good enough to keep them separate, I shall only be here a short time. Ah, Councillor!"

"Good gracious, Lübbener, what is the matter with you?"

Lübbener signed to him to be silent, and laid his finger on his lips at the same time, then drew the horrified Councillor into the farthest corner of the cloak-room, and said, as he stood on the tips of his toes, and stretched his short neck as far as possible out of his white tie, "Is he still upstairs?"

"Giraldi?" asked the Councillor, whose mind was still full of the Italian's image. "You must have met him at the door."

"He! Philip--Schmidt?"

Utterly absurd as the question seemed, the Councillor could not smile; his friend's face, always grey, was now ashy-white; the little black eyes, which generally twinkled so merrily, were now fixed; each one of the short hairs, so thickly covering the low forehead, seemed to stand up of itself.

"Do not stare at me so," exclaimed Lübbener. "I am quite in my right senses; I only hope that other people see as clearly into their affairs as I do with mine. I was with Haselow just before closing-time, to see if he could not help me with a hundred thousand or so to-morrow, as I had had a somewhat heavy payment to make, for which I was not prepared. 'It is just the same with me,' said Haselow. 'Signor Giraldi took away the last fifty thousand of the Warnow money an hour ago--the whole half million in three days.'"

"Extraordinary! most extraordinary!" said the Councillor; "as the agent of the Baroness, to whom the half belongs, we certainly allowed him to invest the whole, but still--"

"Beware! beware!" gasped the other. "There is something wrong--very wrong. Yesterday Golm throws half a million into the market; I keep up the price notwithstanding to thirty; this morning that abominable speech of Lasker's--down they go to twenty; this afternoon I have to pay Giraldi every farthing of the Golm mortgage. I have struggled, I am struggling still desperately, but there are limits to everything."

"It is very hard," said the Councillor, sighing. "Our splendid, splendid enterprise! The Minister, too, was quite in despair to-day; but--shall we not go upstairs? We can go on with our conversation there. I have several things of importance to communicate to you."

"Hush!" said Lübbener.

He stood listening intently, then walked quickly to the big window from which he could see out of the cloak-room into the vestibule, shook his head and came back to the Councillor, muttering unintelligibly between his pale lips.

"What is the matter now?" said the Councillor anxiously.

The banker's little black eyes glanced towards the servants in the cloak-room. They could hear nothing, and were moreover occupied in arranging their numbers; then he made the Councillor a sign to stoop his tall figure to him.

"I ought to have consulted you properly, but the danger that he"--the banker pointed with his finger in the direction from which the noise of the ball came--"was too great. Our four millions preference shares which would have to be issued now--"

"Good heavens!" said the Councillor.

"It was a mere vague suspicion, but it left me no peace. He and I, you know, have the keys, and when after the office was shut, I told the clerk I had some business still to do--true enough"--the Councillor had bent his head so low that the banker was whispering into his ear. Then they looked fixedly into each other's eyes. The Councillor's long face had turned as grey as the other's.

"But this is a matter for the police," he said.

An evil smile crossed the banker's compressed lips.

"It has cost me a great deal of trouble to convince them of it."

"So then----"

The banker nodded.

"And when?"

"I expect them every minute. They wanted me to show myself here, because my remaining away altogether--"

"Quite right! Quite true!" said the Councillor. "It is very, very painful--still--I will certainly--under these circumstances----"

And he made a step towards the cloakroom table.

"Councillor, you will not," cried Lübbener, holding fast by his coat-tail.

At this moment a tremendous flourish of trumpets sounded in the vestibule. The servants rushed from behind their table to the window. The pretty girls who had been waiting upon the ladies ran past them; "They are coming, they are coming."

The two gentlemen had also gone to the window, as the flourish sounded a second time, from long trumpets, which eight men dressed as heralds were blowing on the broad landing of the staircase. They turned their instruments upwards to right and left, as if to summon the assembly from above. And in fact they had scarcely uttered their call for the third time, before the company, who had been prepared beforehand, began to appear.

A splendid sight, whose magnificence even the Councillor, in spite of his thoughts being full of anxiety and care, could not but allow, whilst the servants broke out into loud cries of admiration; only Herr Lübbener's grey countenance kept the look of a man who is too much behind the scenes to take much pleasure in the play himself.

The guests came down the marble stairs from both sides, the width being more than sufficient for two couples at once. The brilliant streams met on the landing, but only to separate again, and swarm down the lower stairs to the vestibule, which already began to fill, whilst the staircase and surrounding passages were still swarming with the gay crowd, which while waiting for the stairs to be free for them, could meanwhile enjoy the brilliant spectacle from above all the longer. Preceded by the trumpeting heralds they paraded the vestibule, which was decorated by Justus's four statues, and brightly lighted by an immense chandelier and numerous candelabra, while it was divided from the outer hall by splendid columns, till suddenly the great folding-doors were flung open, and, as the trumpets ceased, soft music sounding from within invited to the pleasures of the table.

"Did you see him?" asked Lübbener, with a grim smile.

"How could I avoid it?" answered the Councillor, sighing; "with my old friend Baroness Kniebreche on his arm. Wonderful! The man has nerves of steel."

"I think you had better come in with me, Councillor," said Lübbener; "if only for the reason that I suspect you could not get out of the house now."

"Do you think so?" said the Councillor, sighing; "then there is really nothing else to be done."

And he followed his resolute companion, with anything but a festive countenance, into the vestibule, where they mingled with the last comers, who, now that the ranks had been broken, were pressing most impatiently into the supper-room.

CHAPTER VI.

Any anxiety about finding places proved quite unfounded. There would have been room for the whole party in the gorgeous dining-room, if every seat had been occupied at the little tables laid for eight or ten people each. But as it had been foreseen that this would not be the case, tables were also laid in the great conservatory, which stood at right angles with the dining-room and connected this wing of the house with the other. The last comers had the privilege of supping under palm trees, as Justus laughingly remarked to Ottomar, both being amongst the latest arrivals.

"Stay with us," said Ottomar, pointing to his table, at which three or four officers and some ladies belonging to the theatre, amongst whom was Bertalda, were trying to arrange themselves. "I think there is room enough, if not we will make room."

"I am sorry," answered Justus; "but I am already engaged to a few friends there in the corner, and if our garden is not quite so brilliant as yours--yet you see we also have roses blooming."

"And magnificent ones. Who is the lady in silver grey? What a splendid figure!"

Justus laughed. "You must not betray me. Perfect carnival freedom reigns here. She is a cousin of my colleague Bunzel, alias--his model, alias----"

"Werben! Werben!" resounded from the officers' table.

"Justus! Justus!" from that of the artists'.

"Hope you will enjoy yourself," cried Ottomar.

"Same to you," said Justus; and to himself he added, "poor boy!"

He knew the sad story, and had besides heard lately from Reinhold, with whom he kept up a constant correspondence, new and worse things of Carla, which Meta, who had arrived quite unexpectedly this morning, fully confirmed.

"You will see," said Meta, "it will turn out badly. Dear Elsa suspects nothing; but I have a pair of sharp eyes, you know, and I am sure that the Count and Carla have got some understanding between them. If only Ottomar would let her go! but he is the sort of man who, if any one tries to take from him what he ought to be thankful to let go, says, 'No, not now.' He is not so sensible as we are, you know. And now make haste and be off to your great party!"

How laughing and beaming were his Meta's eyes, who by her great good sense had overcome all obstacles--"To-morrow we will order the furniture to suit your artistic tastes, you know!"--and how darkly and restlessly gleamed the eyes in which he had just looked! "The handsome face sunken and wasted as if in the last ten weeks he had aged twice as many years," thought Justus, "and in spite of his gay words, how bitter a look there had been upon his lips! Poor boy!"

"What are you making such a wry face for?" cried Kille, the architect, as the new comer approached the table.

"No mooning allowed here!" cried Bencke, the historical painter.

"He is thinking of the left hip of his 'Industry,' which is so much awry that it is almost dislocated!" cried friend Bunzel.

"Or of Lasker's speech, which has been cutting everybody up!" cried the architect.

"I am thinking just now of what you are always thinking of, nothing at all!" said Justus, taking a place next to Bunzel's "cousin," and passing his hand over his bald forehead to brush away the unpleasant impression.

It would have been hard indeed for even a less cheerful disposition to have given way to gloomy thoughts at this table and in such company. They talked and laughed and joked in the most extravagant way. They had all worked at the great building, especially the architect who had drawn the plan and directed the execution, and now were showing up each other's mistakes in good-humoured banter. And between whiles came serious and weighty talk upon art and artists, or upon Lasker's speech, which Justus, who in the sweat of his brow had sat out the whole debate--"for reasons, you know, Meta"--thought splendid beyond all belief, while the architect declared that the man might certainly be right on the whole--there were stranger stories even connected with some of the railroads--but of actual building he knew no more than a new-born babe; till one or the other who thought the conversation was getting too serious, threw in some wild joke, and the laughter that had been for a short time checked resounded again louder and more heartily than ever. And at the other tables, if there was perhaps less mirth, there was no less noise. The champagne flowed in streams. The innumerable servants had enough to do to renew the empty bottles in the silver wine-coolers; and great irritation seemed to be felt at the smallest neglect of the servants in this, matter. Everybody gave orders; everybody wanted the best wine, the second best was good for nothing, People passed the wine or the dishes from table to table, "just as if it had been a public dinner," said Baroness Kniebreche, surveying the crowd through her eye-glass; "quite like an hotel. I never saw such a thing in a private house before. It is extremely amusing. Do you know, Wallbach, that when you passed behind my chair just now I was within an ace of addressing you as the head waiter."

"Ha! Very funny!" answered Wallbach absently. "You cannot expect to find the good company and manners to which we are accustomed in such a house as this. It is and will always remain the house of a parvenu. But I was going to ask you, my dear Baroness, if you had kept your counsel as to the last piece of information I gave you, as I asked you to do?"

"The last piece of information?" cried the Baroness; "but, my dear child, you have told me so much, that I positively have forgotten which is the first and which is the last. Why do you want to know?"

"Ottomar avoids me in a way which, notwithstanding that our relations have been disturbed lately, is most marked. Just now he looked straight over my head."

"Then look over his head, my dear child. I really can give you no other advice. Besides, what is it you want? You can't wash fur without wetting it. That's nonsense. If you want to have a row, have it--if not, let it alone; but don't bother me any more about the matter. And now give me some of that lobster salad--there, at your elbow--it is delicious."

"The old woman is drunk," muttered Wallbach, as he returned to his place at the next table.

Philip had excused himself for a quarter of an hour from the old lady to go round the room, and was now going from table to table with his glass, which had to be constantly replenished, in his hand, received here with praises of the splendid feast, there with cordial shouts, "Splendid, my dear fellow!" "Well done, my boy!" and at several points with hurrahs and drinking of healths; while at others people seemed to require a reminder that the gentleman in the white tie and waistcoat, with the broad forehead, and the courteous smile on his red, clean-shaven face, who stood there glass in hand before them, was the master of the house.

Philip had gone the round of the room, and must now pay a visit to the conservatory which opened out of the room. He came here at once upon a large table surrounded by young men, who received him with such enthusiasm that he seemed quite to overlook a smaller table close by, and with a wave of his hand and a jesting word to the young men was passing on farther, when a hoarse well-known voice said: "Now then, Schmidt, are not we to have the honour?" Philip's face quivered, but it was beaming as if in joyful surprise as he turned round and threw up his arms, crying, "At last! Why, Lübbener, Councillor! Where the deuce have you been hiding? I really thought I was to be deprived of this pleasure. And you are quite alone, too! Like the lions, you keep apart!"

"We were late comers," said the Councillor, touching Philip's extended glass with his; "it was a mere matter of chance!"

"As long as you are amusing yourselves," said Philip.

"Certainly," answered Lübbener. "We can see here into both rooms. It is the best place of all."

"Then it belongs to you by right," cried Philip. "The best place in the room. The best in the house! Where would room and house be without you, my good Hugo? Dear old man!"

And, as if overcome with emotion, he took the little man in his arms, and held him, not daring to resist, pressed to his breast, when a loud voice a few steps from them cried, "Gentlemen!"

"Oh, horror!" exclaimed Philip, letting Lübbener out of his embrace.

"Ladies and gentlemen--"

The speaker was a bank clerk from the young men's table, famed among his companions for his extraordinary talent for after-dinner speeches. He had so placed himself, glass in hand, between the dining-room and the conservatory that he might have been heard in both rooms, if, in the noise which increased every moment, one man's voice had not been as much lost as a drop in the ocean.

"Stand on a chair, Norberg!"

"Hear, hear!"

"Stand on two chairs, Norberg; one is of no use."

"Ladies and gentlemen--"

"Louder, louder! Silence! Hear, hear!"

Nobody could hear anything, but here and there people could see some one standing on a chair gesticulating, and apparently making an attempt to speak; they drew the attention of their neighbours, and though silence was not attained, Herr Norberg, with renewed hopes, exerted the full force of his lungs, so far overpowering the noise as to make himself audible, at least to the circle which had gathered round him, and which was increasing every moment.

"Ladies and gentlemen! Our German proverb says that every man forges his own fortune--"

"Bravo! hear, hear!"

"But, unfortunately, every one does not understand smith's work, and the work fails in consequence. For the smith's work we need a Schmidt--"[^[1]]

"Very good! Hear! Silence there!"

"And if a smith forges his fortune, we may be assured that it is a work which he need not be ashamed of before masters or apprentices."

"Capital! Bravo! Bravissimo!"

"And, ladies and gentlemen, the masters, and more particularly we young apprentices who have still much to learn, and who wish to learn, will watch his fingers in order to find out how and with what tools he works; for the tools are the first consideration!"

"Bravo! Bravo!"

There was almost perfect silence. Herr Norberg, now sure of his effect, continued in a pathetic tone of voice:

"But what are his tools? First, of course, the anvil--the immovable anvil, formed of the cast steel of honesty--"

"Hear! hear!"

"Of honesty, which can bear every blow and shock, because it rests on its own merits, and tested as it is by the enduring and flattering confidence of the initiated, and, if I may so express myself, polished by the good report of all honest people--"

"Bravo! bravo!"

"May laugh to scorn the rust of slanderous tongues which are raised against it and its like, if such there be, even should it proceed from the tribune of a certain great House--"

The last words were scarcely to be heard in the indescribable uproar which arose at the first allusion to the great event of the day, with which the minds of all were still filled, or at least occupied. Whether the opprobrious word was approved or condemned by the majority of the company, it was impossible to decide. Encouraging, even enthusiastic acclamations, in which Norberg's particular friends were the loudest, words of dissatisfaction, of disapproval, even of the greatest indignation, all this buzzed, resounded, and reverberated, till almost suddenly the storm abated, as if all, friends and foes, were curious to hear what the man would utter further, as they all took it for granted that he would not rest satisfied with this one sally.

But the prudent Norberg was careful not to stake the issue of his well-considered speech by another impromptu. He spoke again in the flowery language in which he had begun, of the "Heavy hammer of Strength," which the master he honoured could wield better than any other; of the indefatigable "Pincers of Energy," with which he held fast to plans that he had once made; even of the "Bellows of strong breathing Courage," which ever renewed in his own breast and in the hearts of his fellow-workmen the flame of inspiration which belongs to all creative power. Provided with these tools, and gifted with these qualities, it had been possible for the master to attain to this imposing result; to carry through his vast plans in spite of the indifference of the public, in spite of the ignorant opposition of the authorities; to make new roads for trade, convenient ways for commerce, towards the completion of which he was now working, it might reasonably be hoped not in vain, in spite of all and everything. Lastly, as the keystone of the edifice of his fortune, or to keep to his simile, "as the last link in the long chain of famous works which he has forged, to erect this house, which he has made so great, so splendid, not for himself, for he is the most retiring of men, but for his friends, whom he has assembled around him to-day in hundreds, as representatives of the remaining thousands, and who may now prove their representative powers by three times three, as from the thousands, for the brave, disinterested Schmidt, the smith of his own fortune."

The company acceded to the invitation, some from conviction, the majority excited by wine, not a few out of mere politeness, with loud hurrahs, accompanied by a noisy flourish from the band, while the speaker descended from his chair and received, with proud modesty, the thanks of his host and the congratulations of the guests. He had surpassed himself to-day; he had been magnificent, it was only a pity and a shame that he had not given it stronger to Lasker, who really had deserved more.

"I do not think he will be too pleased as it is," answered Herr Norberg complacently; "but now, Schmidt, old boy, up with you! You can't help yourself!"

"No, you can't help yourself!" chimed in the guests; "up with you! fire away!"

"But, gentlemen," exclaimed Philip, "after such a speech! Let me have a few minutes to think at least."

"It won't do you any good!" said Herr Norberg encouragingly and patronisingly, "I know all about it! Improvise as I did, it always answers best."

"If you think----"

"Silence! listen! don't you see?"

The tall, broad-shouldered man who now stood on the chair was visible enough; and as his appearance in that place was already expected, there ensued at any rate sufficient quiet to enable him to begin with a certain amount of dignity.

He would be brief, as fortunately he was in a position to be. The gratitude he felt for the distinguished honour which had just been shown him, for the kindness, the friendliness, yes, he ventured to say the word--the affection which was showered upon him--such gratitude, heartfelt as it was, could be expressed in a few words which, however, came from the heart. Besides, it was not expected from the man of deeds, in which capacity he had just been honoured, that he should be an orator like his predecessor, whose speech it was easier to criticise than to surpass; he had detected one defect. His strength, his courage, his honesty had been praised; those were qualities which, the latter especially, he expected from every man; and he therefore ventured to accept a small portion of the exuberant praise lavished upon him.

"The whole of it!--without deduction--without discount--with interest!" exclaimed the enthusiastic crowd.

"Well, well, gentlemen!" exclaimed Philip, "if you will have it so, the full praise! But, gentlemen, what of the head, the mind and understanding! Perhaps you will say they do not exist----"

"Oh, oh! I will take a hundred thousand shares in you!" shrieked the enthusiastic auditors.

"No, no, gentlemen!" shouted Philip over the heads of the shouters; "where nothing exists, the King himself must lose his rights. I am no Prince and Imperial Chancellor, who has not only his heart, but his head also in the right place."

Here Philip was compelled to pause, till the storm of applause which his last words had called forth was somewhat abated.

"Yes, gentlemen, I acknowledge it; he is my ideal, but an unattainable one! The qualities that a great man, world-renowned as he is, unites in himself--the most opposite qualities, yet all equally necessary to success--for these we small people must combine. And with me it is no accidental chance, but a dispensation of Providence, and a sure confirmation, that in this moment, without any previous agreement, as you will believe me on my word, the two men who are my associates in business and in every sense of the word, are standing near me; and in this association if I am really the heart, they have unquestionably the department of the head; here to my right, Councillor Schieler--to my left, the banker, Hugo Lübbener."

Uproarious applause followed, which changed to shouts of laughter, in which even the impartial spectators joined, when the next moment, raised and held fast by the irresistible hands of the half-intoxicated crowd, the two gentlemen named by Philip appeared in person on chairs to his right and left. Philip, with quick presence of mind, seized the hands of both, and cried:

"Here! I have you, I hold you, my two heads who are only one, and who are all in all one with me; one heart and one soul! I was about to call for a cheer for these two, without whom I were nothing; but as we three are one, and cannot with the best wishes for health drink our own healths, I ask you, we ask you for a cheer, a hearty cheer for those whom we have to thank for the satisfaction of being here together this evening, and I think I may say, of enjoying ourselves; the architect of this house and the artists who have decorated it."

While the company willingly complied with his request, and the band again accompanied them with a shrill flourish of trumpets; while Herr Norberg embraced Philip and assured him that he himself could not have done it better; while the two other gentlemen, who had sprung quickly from their chairs, were overpowered with shaking of hands and congratulations, great excitement reigned in the group of artists. Of course somebody must answer, but who should it be? The historical painter would just as soon have mounted the scaffold; one or two others "could have done it, but it was not in their line;" the architect, as a native of Berlin, freemason, and member of numberless societies, a born and bred orator, did not see why he who had done the most should do anything extra now.

"Justus must speak!" exclaimed Bunzel; "he can take the opportunity of putting to rights that dislocated hip."

"As you will," said Justus; "there is something here that requires setting to rights undoubtedly, of which your empty heads would never think."

"Silence there! Hear! hear! Silence!" thundered the artists.

"Bravo! bravo! da capo!" shrieked the young men.

"I think once will be enough, gentlemen," said Justus, who was already mounted on the chair.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I come before you as a boy before his schoolmaster. For though it is only proper that we artists should express our thanks for the kindness shown to us, I am neither the eldest nor the youngest amongst us, neither the one who has the greatest merit with regard to this beautiful house, nor perhaps the one amongst us who has sinned most with regard to it; but as I am here, I offer in all our names my most grateful thanks for your goodness, and as I feel by no means steady on this rickety pedestal, and as I have learnt from my predecessors----"

"Bravo! bravo!" exclaimed the artists.

"That if one wishes to leave this place one must first look out for a successor, but feel that in this way the matter would never come to an end, I have chosen for the purpose a person who is not in this company; and I ask you to give a cheer for him, who has already spoken himself to-day, and has spoken to my heart, and, I know, to the hearts of many in this company; and to give a second cheer for him, because it would ill become this company if a word were spoken against him here, as has been done, without an answer being forthcoming from amongst us; and a third cheer, and long life to him who requires three lives in order to carry out the herculean labour he has undertaken!"

Justus drew up his slender figure, and his clear voice sounded like a trumpet:

"Long live Edward Lasker!"

And his "Hip! hip! hurrah!" resounded in shouts from the artists, whilst the astonished opponents remained silent, and all who had been shocked at the previous offensive words, and they were many, cheered with them, and the music sounded in the midst, so that the whole room shook, and old Baroness Kniebreche shrieked out to Baroness Holzweg, "I really believe I can hear again with both ears!"

The storm was still raging when Anton, the valet, came up to Philip, who stood shrugging his shoulders and trying to smooth matters amidst a group of gentlemen who were all talking to him at once, with violent gesticulations, hoping and expecting that he would properly resent and punish such a public insult. Anton must have had something very urgent to say, as he pulled his master repeatedly by the sleeve, and dragged him almost by force out of the group.

Philip's face had got very red, but at the first words which the servant, as he unwillingly bent towards him, whispered in his ear, it became white as ashes. He now himself hastily drew the man a few paces farther on one side.

"Where is the gentleman?"

"He is close at hand, in the billiard-room," answered Anton; "here is his card."

The servant was as pale as his master, and brought the words out with difficulty from between his chattering teeth.

"Any one with him?"

"They are in the vestibule and out in the street and in the court--oh, sir, sir!"

"Hush! Will you help me?"

"Willingly, sir."

Philip whispered a few words into the man's ear, who then went hastily through the room into the vestibule, from which, unchecked, he disappeared, through a door, into the cellar regions. Philip stood there for a few minutes, his firm lips tightly compressed, and his fixed eyes bent on the floor. He had not expected this; he had hoped to have had at least another week's law. The devil must have prompted Lübbener. However, the great haul must in the end have failed, and he had got the ready money, at any rate, provided; but he must venture it! If he could only get out of the house, they must be more than cunning--he had had everything prepared for weeks in case of this happening. As he again lifted his gloomy eyes, his glance encountered Lübbener's, who, only a few paces off, apparently in eager conversation with the Councillor and some other gentlemen, had closely observed the short scene between the master and servant, and, as the former stepped back to the group, now turned his back upon him.

"Excuse me for a few minutes, gentlemen," said Philip; "I have still some arrangements to make for the cotillon, and then, if you please, we will leave the table."

He said it in his usual loud and swaggering tone, whilst at the same time he caught Lübbener by the wrist, as if in an overflow of hilarity, and drew him out of the group.

"What do you want?" gasped Lübbener.

"To tell you," said Philip, grinding his teeth, "that you shall pay me for this, sooner or later!"

He flung the little man from him so that he tumbled backwards into the group, and making his way through the conservatory with a firm step, passed into the billiard-room, to meet a gentleman who stood there alone with folded arms, leaning on one of the tables, and apparently studying the ornamentation of the door through which Philip entered.

"Inspector Müller?" said Philip, who still held the card in his hand.

"I have that honour," answered the inspector, unfolding his arms so slowly that he could not well take Philip's outstretched hand.

"And what procures me this pleasure?" asked Philip.

"The pleasure is a very doubtful one, Herr Schmidt. I have a warrant against you!"

The officer took a paper from his breast-pocket, and so held it that Philip could easily have read it by the lamp over the billiard-table; but Philip had taken up a ball, and was making a hazard.

"A warrant! How very strange! Look there! a double hazard too! Are you a billiard player, Herr Müller?"

"Occasionally, when I have time, which I seldom have--for instance, not at present. I must therefore beg of you to follow me without delay."

"And leave my guests? But, Herr Müller, just imagine--four hundred people, and no host! It is absolutely impossible!"

"It must be possible."

"But it is not necessary. You are my guest. Toilette at this hour is of no consequence; besides, you are got up regardless. Remain by my side, of course--a cousin who has just arrived--what you will! Your men, in plain clothes I take it for granted, can amuse themselves finely meanwhile with my people. Afterwards we can drive together in my carriage----"

"You are very kind, but a carriage is already provided, and now stands in the courtyard amongst a number of equipages, so that we need not again pass through the vestibule. You see, Herr Schmidt, I go to work with the greatest consideration; but I must now really beg that you will not put my patience to a longer test."

Philip rolled the ball which he held in his hand from him at random, and turned round.

"Well, if nothing else will satisfy you; but I hope I may change my dress?"

"I have no objection to that, only you must submit to my presence meanwhile."

"No apologies, Herr Müller, between men! Will you be so good?"

And he led the way, the officer following on his steps. In the library, which opened out of the billiard-room, an assistant officer was waiting, who now joined them.

"You are very cautious, Herr Müller," said Philip over his shoulder,

"My duty, Herr Schmidt!"

He touched Philip's arm, and said in a low voice, "If you will give me your word of honour to make no attempt at escape, which would moreover be quite fruitless, I can"--and the inspector made a sign over his shoulder--"spare you at least this escort."

"No attempt at escape!" said Philip laughing; "oh! Herr Müller, I can think of nothing else. I would vanish through the floor or the walls if I only could."

The officer could not help smiling.

"Go back into the vestibule again, Ortmann," he said.

"Thank you for your confidence," said Philip, as they went up a winding staircase, guarded by a handsome richly-gilt railing, by means of which the library was connected with the upper story of the right wing, which was separated from the ball-room by the whole width of the courtyard, that was partially glazed like the conservatory.

"The fact is, Herr Müller, that inconvenient as it certainly is to me, I cannot take this episode really in earnest----"

Philip had opened a door in the corridor in which they now stood.

"This is a passage-room," he said in an explanatory tone; "I should prefer to turn to the right, through that door into my living rooms, which are to-day being used also as company rooms. But as there is no help for it, we must go through the one on the left to my bedroom."

He pushed the door open. "Pray go first; for the time being, at least, I am still the host here."

The officer did as he was asked, ready, if his prisoner should attempt to shut the door upon him, which opened inwards, to stop it with his outstretched foot. But Philip followed him close, shutting the door behind him.

"My bedroom!" said Philip, waving his right hand, whilst the left still played with the lock, to the magnificent apartment, which, like all they had passed through, was brilliantly lighted with wax candles; "furnished in French style, and as if it were for a young lady who had just returned home from school! but these upholsterers are autocrats. This way, please, Herr Müller--my dressing-room--the last in the row--and dark--but that we can rectify."

Philip held up the branch candlestick, which he had taken from the console under the looking-glass in the bedroom, and threw the light all round as if to assure the Inspector that there was no second door in the space left free by the carved oak wardrobes, and that the one they had come in by was the only entrance and exit. He put the candlestick down on a table, took off his coat, and opened one of the cupboards.

"I will wait in your bedroom while you are dressing; said the officer.

"Pray do," said Philip, as he took off his white waistcoat and undid his tie; "I hope you will find the arm-chairs to your taste----"

The officer returned to the bedroom without quite shutting the door, and took his place on one of the magnificent sofas.

"From Delorme in Paris," said Philip, opening and shutting the cupboards in the dressing-room; "it is supposed to be something quite out of the way, although I cannot see it. Only a few minutes, Herr Müller; I am just as if I had come out of the river. My whole house is ventilated after the newest principles, and yet this awful heat! À propos, I suppose I may give notice downstairs that I have been taken suddenly unwell, and so forth."

"I have no objection," said the officer. "I am only afraid that, discreet as I have been, the rumour will have spread; it is generally so at least."

"It can't be helped then," said Philip, who seemed busy with his boots; "will the thing never come out? There, at last! What a pity that it is midnight, and the magistrates cannot be got hold of, or I should certainly be back again in half an hour. I have never asked what it is about. I know without asking; it is some wretched trick of Lübbener's, to drive me out of the board of directors. I knew that he had been for some days in frightful difficulties, and was certain that our preference shares were not safe from him. No respectable bank would advance him a farthing upon the whole four million; but some swindling firm--he knows plenty of them--might advance him six or eight hundred thousand--a mere nothing in his position, but when there is nothing better to be had the devil himself eats flies. So, thought I, they are more secure in my hands than in the safe. In proof that I was right, he has found me out. You must know from experience, my dear Herr Müller, that no one thinks of looking for a man behind the bushes unless he has been in hiding there once or twice himself. It was a bold thing to do, I know, but mine is a daring nature. There! now another pair of boots, and I am ready."

Herr Schmidt, who must have been going about in slippers for the last five minutes, appeared to have gone again to one of the cupboards, in which he was hunting about. "Varnished boots? Impossible! these are the right ones--these," the officer heard him say, as if to himself. The creaking of a chair--he was a heavy man--a smothered oath--the boots apparently did not go on easily--then silence.

Absolute silence for a minute, during which Herr Müller got up from his arm-chair and went to the window to look across the glass roof of the courtyard, to the illuminated windows of the ball-room, behind which one or two ladies and gentlemen could be seen. The supper had apparently lasted too long for the lovers of dancing, and since the master of the house had vanished, they wanted to set the ball going again of their own will. And indeed the music began again now from beyond, whilst beneath the glass roof sounded the stamping of horses, and the talking and shouting of the coachmen.

"A terrible business for Herr Schmidt," thought the Inspector; "the affair is certainly not literally as he represents it, but Lübbener is perhaps the biggest swindler of the two. They generally get off free. He might really be ready now."

Herr Müller stepped from the window back into the room. "Are you ready, Herr Schmidt?"

No answer.

"Are you---- Good God! the man must have done himself an injury!"

The officer pushed open the half-closed door--the candelabra burnt on the dressing-table--coats and linen were strewed about--the room was empty.

"Don't play any foolish tricks, Herr Schmidt," said the officer, looking towards the big cupboard, whose door stood partly open.

But he no longer believed in a joke, as after having hastily glanced into the open cupboard, he threw the light of the candelabra right and left over the hangings, which were leather coloured to represent wood. No trace of a door! And yet there must be one! There, at last! This scarcely perceptible crack, where the darker stripes of the hangings met the lighter wainscoting--wonderfully done!--and here below, hardly visible, the tiny lock. Herr Müller pushed and kicked against the door, only to discover that it was made of iron and would defy his utmost efforts. He rushed out of the dressing-room into the bedroom--the door into the anteroom was locked! There, close to the handle, was the same lock as that on the concealed door, no bigger than the key-hole in the dial plate of a clock. He was a prisoner!

The infuriated officer threw open the window, and called as loudly as he could to his men, of whom two should be in the courtyard. But on the other side the fiddles squeaked and the violoncellos growled, and below the horses stamped and the coachmen shouted and laughed. No one heard the cries from above, until in his despair he took the first thing that came to hand and flung it through the glass, so that the fragments fell upon the heads of a pair of fiery horses, which, frightened out of their wits, reared and backed, driving the carriage into another one behind them, which rolling back again made the horses of a third recoil. In the midst of the frightful confusion and the tremendous noise that ensued, the shouts of the officer were overpowered, until at last one of the policemen remarked them, but without being able to understand a word his superior said. Nevertheless, he hurried out of the court into the vaulted passage which, running on the right side of the building and round behind the court, connected the latter with the street, and was used for the exit of the carriages, those coming in entering on the opposite side, to tell his comrades who were posted there that something had happened, and that they must be on their guard. He had done so in a few breathless words, and was in the act of running back, when from one or other of the doors opening into the passage, two servants rushed out, one an elderly man, who seemed to be trembling from head to foot with excitement, and one younger and very tall who nearly ran into his arms. The policeman connected the hurry of these servants with what had just occurred, and he was confirmed in this opinion by the fact of his remarking at the same moment, that a narrow, steep stone staircase led up from the door which the servants had in their haste left open.

"What has happened upstairs?" cried the policeman.

"Herr Schmidt has had a fit of apoplexy," answered the tall servant. "I am going for the doctor, do not detain me. Here is the Inspector's card."

"All right!" said the policeman, throwing a glance at the card. "Let him pass. He is going for the doctor. How can I get upstairs?"

"Straight up these steps," was the breathless reply.

"Then be off with you!"

The man rushed breathlessly to the exit past the policeman, who willingly made way for him, ran to the string of cabs which stood before the house, only carriages being allowed inside the courtyard, and sprang into the end one, calling to the driver to go as quickly as possible; he should be well paid. It was a matter of life and death!

In the supper-room the confusion increased as the absence of the host continued.

Amongst the few who still kept their place was Baroness Kniebreche, although Herr von Wallbach urgently pressed her departure.

"Only a few minutes more," cried the Baroness, without taking her glass from her eye; "it is so interesting. In spite of my eighty-two years, I have never seen anything like it. Only just look, my dear Wallbach, at that table where the little bald-headed man is sitting who a little while ago proposed that man Lasker's health; tell me--I did not hear a word of it for my part. The man with the long fair hair is positively kissing his neighbour--an artist too of course--enviable people! Who is the handsome young man with the black hair and fiery eyes; at the same table? I have noticed him already this evening--a foreigner, we do not grow such plants. He, moreover, never takes his eyes off Ottomar's table. He seems to be struck by the pretty ballet-dancer. I cannot understand how Ottomar can go on flirting with Ferdinanda, when he has such a choice before him. But it is no use disputing about taste; it is a wonderful thing. That faded Agnes Holzweg and Prince Wladimir. Well, he cannot be very particular, and it seems to be going off too, as he has not even been here for a few minutes. Take care of the old lady! Pooh! She can hear me? I can hardly hear myself speak. That old woman is a tremendous chatterer. She was talking just now for ever so long to young Grieben of the Hussars, who I think is somehow related to her, and has also paid attentions to Agues in his time, before the Prince began to do so. There he is talking to Ottomar. If the old lady has been chattering, Grieben will take the greatest satisfaction in boring Ottomar with it, as he knows of his dislike to Agnes, whom Grieben, I hear, in spite of all, still adores."

"But, my dear lady," cried the horrified Wallbach, "you have not told that notorious gossip--"

"Look! look!" cried the Baroness, giving Wallbach a sharp blow with her closed fan, "there, at the first--second--fourth table! The men are coming to blows! it is really splendid! I never saw anything like it in my life."

"It really is high time for us to go," said Herr von Wallbach; "it is getting too bad. Allow me to send a servant for my carriage--"

"Well, if you really are determined," said the Baroness, "but I am still amusing myself immensely."

Herr von Wallbach had stood up, but the servants who were hurrying about with wine and ices seemed little inclined to do his errand, and he was forced to look elsewhere through the room for some one more accommodating.

Whilst he was still talking to the Baroness, Ottomar went up to Justus, who was talking to his friend Bunzel as quietly as if the storm which he had raised, and which increased in fury every minute, was not of the slightest consequence to him.

"A word with you, Herr Anders,"

"Ten, if you like," rejoined Justus, jumping up; "but for heaven's sake, Herr Von Werben----"

"What?"

"Pardon me! you did not look very cheerful before, but now--has anything unpleasant happened to you?"

"Indeed there has. Tell me, Herr Anders, I am in a great hurry, and cannot stop to explain--I know that you are very intimate with Captain Schmidt, and I have just heard that there exists, some understanding between him and--my sister. Do you know anything of this?"

Justus did not know what this meant. Ottomar's eyes, blazing with fury and an excitement which rose above the fumes of wine, boded no good; but no evasion was possible.

"Yes, Herr Von Werben; and I am convinced that only the lack of any friendly advance on your part has made my friend hold back, and caused him to leave you in ignorance of his understanding with your sister, whilst, so far as I know, your father has long been acquainted with it."

"Very likely, very likely," said Ottomar; "my family and I have long been--but no matter! And in any case--I deeply regret that I did not cultivate Captain Schmidt's friendship--however, I admire and esteem him highly, very highly--I should always have considered it an honour--everything might have been so totally different----"

He passed his hand over his brow.

"Is there still no possibility?" asked Justus quickly.

A melancholy smile passed over the handsome face.

"How I wish there were," he said. "I thought myself--but it is too late, too late! I have found that out--this evening--just now--a man in my position cannot allow his name to be in every one's mouth; and that fact is used with great skill--the greatest skill--confounded skill!"

His teeth were gnawing hard at his lip, his angry eyes looked beyond Justus into the room as if seeking some one, and they kept their direction as he asked, even more hastily and abruptly than before:

"Perhaps you are also acquainted with Car--with Fräulein von Wallbach's relations with--with--I see by your eyes that you know what I mean. And you--but the others, who are talking of it all round, and reckoning that for well-known reasons I must keep quiet about it; but I'll be hanged if I do!"

"Only a man cannot have everything at the same time," said Justus.

"But I will keep quiet before those chatterers until it suits one of them to speak out. I will settle it, believe me, in five minutes!"

Ottomar suddenly rushed away from Justus, "Like a falcon after its prey," thought the latter, "Oh, this fatal honour! What sacrifices has Moloch already required! Poor boy! I like him in spite of all the harm that he has already done and that he still seems intent upon doing. Well, I cannot hinder him with the best will in the world. Good gracious!--already half-past one!"

Justus had of his own accord promised Meta to leave the party at twelve o'clock punctually. He looked round for Antonio, who was talking eagerly, near the table at which Ottomar and the other officers had supped, with the piquante young lady whom one of the officers--not Ottomar--had conducted to supper, and who, now that Ottomar was also gone, appeared to have been left behind by the whole party.

"He is always making up to somebody, is Antonio," said Justus, as he watched the insinuating manners of his handsome assistant and the smiles of the young lady. "Let him be; I shall not get him to come home with me."

He looked from Antonio to the tall painter who was in hot argument with a few men who belonged to the "young men's table." "He will soon finish them off," thought Justus, just as two or three men left the group and came with angry faces towards him.

"You took upon yourself to wish long life to Lasker!" said a swarthy youth.

"And I hope that he will long gratify that wish," answered Justus, with a courteous bow, as he continued on his way past his astonished interlocutor.

Ottomar, meanwhile, had gone up to the Baroness, and, without taking the chair next to her, although it, as well as half those at the table, had long been unoccupied, said in a loud voice, as was necessary to the deaf old lady in the noise which prevailed around:

"Pardon me, Baroness, but will you allow me to trouble you with a question?"

The Baroness looked at him through her immense glasses. She knew at once what Ottomar wanted to ask, and that Baroness Holzweg must have repeated what she had told her, and she was determined not to allow herself to be mixed up in the matter.

"Ask anything you like, my dear child," she said.

"Certain rumours which are circulating in this company, about myself on the one hand, and Fräulein von Wallbach on the other, and which have come to my ears from Herr von Grieben amongst others, are traced hack to you, Baroness, as Grieben has them from his aunt, Frau von Holzweg, and she asserts that she had them from you."

"That is a long preamble, my dear child," said the Baroness, to gain time.

"My question will be so much the shorter. From whom did you hear this story?"

"My dear child, all the world is talking about it!"

"I cannot be content with that answer, my dear lady; I must know the actual person."

"Then find him for yourself!" said the Baroness in her rudest tone, turning her back upon him.

Ottomar bit his lip, and went straight up to Herr von Wallbach, who, having vainly sought for some willing messenger through the whole room, now returned to the Baroness to tell her that he would go and look for the carriage himself.

"Baroness Kniebreche has commissioned me to discover the actual person who has set in motion certain rumours about myself and your sister. Am I to find him in the person of that sister's brother?"

"Really, Werben," said Herr von Wallbach, who had turned very pale, "this is not the place to talk about such things."

"That comes rather late, it seems to me, from you, who have spoken of it here, as it appears, not once, but often, and with many people. However, I have naturally no desire to enter into a controversy, but simply to make sure of the fact that this story, impossible as it seems, emanates from you."

"But really, Werben, I may have--it is just possible--made some communication to our old friend Baroness Kniebreche."

"Pardon me one moment, Herr von Wallbach. Herr von Lassberg, would you be kind as to come here for a minute to hear an explanation which Herr von Wallbach will be good enough to give me? You say, Herr von Wallbach, that it is quite possible you may have made a certain communication to our old friend Baroness Kniebreche. Will you oblige me by going on?"

"I really do not know what communication you are thinking of!" cried Herr von Wallbach.

"Do you mean to compel me to mention names?" asked Ottomar, with a scornful movement of his lip, whilst his flashing eyes seemed to pierce Herr von Wallbach's, who stood there helpless, in painful perplexity.

"I think this is sufficient," said Ottomar, turning to his companion; "of course, I will put you au courant at once. Herr von Wallbach, you will hear more from me to-morrow, for to-day I have the honour----"

Ottomar took his companion by the arm, and walked back to his place with him, talking to him with passionate eagerness, whilst Wallbach was surrounded by several of his acquaintances, who from a distance had watched the scene between him and Ottomar, and now wished, with all discretion, to know what had passed between him and his "brother-in-law."

"I cannot engage myself without first speaking to Herr von Werben," Bertalda was just saying, her eyes shining with the desire to dance with the handsome young Italian.

"Are you engaged to that gentleman!" asked Antonio.

"No, but he brought me here in his carriage, and is to take me back again. He wanted to go before. There he comes, ask him--or I will do so myself."

Ottomar, who had just parted with his companion, with a shake of the hand and the words, "To-morrow, then, at eight," was now close to them.

"This gentleman--Herr Antonio Michele, wishes to dance the next waltz with me," said Bertalda. "They are dancing upstairs quite merrily."

Ottomar did not answer immediately. He had already once or twice looked at Antonio, who had sat corner-wise to him at the artists' table, without being able to recollect where he had seen that handsome dark face before. Now as he looked into the black eyes, he knew it was in Justus's studio. This was Justus's Italian assistant, whom Ferdinanda had warned him against, of whom she had said that he persecuted her with his love, that she trembled before his jealousy! In the black eyes which were fastened upon him there gleamed, in spite of the courteous smile upon the lips, an evil flame, as of hate and jealousy mingled. An inexpressible mixed feeling of contempt, disgust and terror passed through Ottomar. After all he had already suffered this evening, that this should be added!

"I must beg you to excuse the lady," he said in his haughtiest tone; "I was just going to offer her my carriage to return home in."

Antonio had discovered long ago from the artists, who were greater frequenters of the theatre than himself, who Bertalda was.

"I will see the lady safely home by-and-by," he said, with an equivocal smile.

The blood flew into Ottomar's face.

"Insolent fellow!" he cried between his teeth, as he lifted his hand.

Antonio started back and put his hand to his breast pocket. Bertalda threw herself almost into Ottomar's arms, and drew him on one side. At that moment, a perfect swarm of men, who had assembled for a game of pool in the billiard-room, poured into the conservatory between the disputants.

Their startled countenances, their violent gesticulations, their loud and confused words, all proclaimed that something unusual had occurred, and that they brought terrible news. But the terrible news had already spread from the other side--from the vestibule into the supper-room. It had already reached the dancers above, who were hastening down the broad stairs, whilst many others met them from the supper-room. "Is it possible?--Have you heard?--Good heavens!--Pretty work!--Who would have thought it!--A man like that!--Let us get away--No one can get away till the house has been searched!--We shall see about that!--Good gracious! where is papa?--A glass of water. For heaven's sake! don't you hear?"

No one heard. Neither the servants, nor the guests, who were streaming out of the rooms into the vestibule and cloak-room, where there was soon a positively dangerous crowd.

It was in vain that some calmer people attempted to quiet the mob; in vain that the released police officer and his men tried to stem the current. The terrified people crowded in confused masses from the brightly-illuminated house, which was still echoing with the noise of the festival, into the dark streets, through which the midnight storm was howling.

BOOK VI.

CHAPTER I.

"Has Friedrich not come back yet!"

"No, General."

August, who had his hand already upon the door, was just leaving the room.

"One moment!" said the General.

August obeyed with a face of much embarrassment; the General had come close up to him, and there was in his countenance, not anger, as August assured himself by one nervous glance upwards, but something peculiar; while the deep tones of his voice did not sound peremptory but very strange, thought August.

"It is of great importance to me to know where my son is at this moment; Friedrich will perhaps not return immediately, and I am losing precious time. You do not know where Friedrich was to take the things?"

The faithful fellow trembled, and his broad, honest face quivered as if tears were not far off; it was only with an effort that he could answer: "Yes, General; Friedrich told me, and he has already two or three times had to take things there when the Lieutenant did not come home; she is called Fräulein Bertalda, and lives in ---- Street, and is, with all due respect, a person who----"

"Good!" said the General, "you need not send Friedrich to me now. It is possible that I may require to send you out. Be ready, therefore!"

"Breakfast will be ready. General----"

"I shall not breakfast to-day."

"Fräulein Sidonie was coming to speak to you, sir; can she come now?"

"I am very sorry--I am busy--you must tell Fräulein Sidonie."

The General turned back into the room. August, in his heartfelt anxiety, longed to say: "If only our young lady were here!" But he did not venture, and so slipped out.

"Part of it was true then," murmured the General, "so I suppose the rest will be also."

He went up to his writing-table, on which lay an open letter that he had received a quarter of an hour before from Herr von Wallbach. Bending over it in vague bewilderment, supporting himself by one hand on the table, he almost mechanically perused it again, then raised himself with a long-drawn breath and passed his hand over his bushy brows, as if trying to sweep away from his mind, like a bad dream, the fearful thing which he read there. Not merely what he read! between the lines there flitted to and fro terrible things which he himself had mentally inserted whilst he read, as in a bad dream the most dreadful part is not in the images which a terror-stricken imagination calls up, but in the expectation of horrors that are still to come. And yet! what more could come, when an alliance with the Werben family was declined as dishonourable! when satisfaction was denied to a Werben!

The latter point, as the most comprehensible, was that to which the unhappy man's wandering thoughts returned and clung most persistently.

A betrothal broken off was a thing that had happened before and might happen again; it was a trifle even, a mere nothing, if only honour were untouched by it, if only Ottomar could stake his life upon his unimpeachable honour. Might not Wallbach's cowardice--he had always thought the man a coward--be taking advantage of Ottomar's difficulties, which "had reached a height and assumed a character that made it dubious, at least, if Herr von Werben were still entitled to demand satisfaction as an officer and a gentleman, or even from the standpoint of ordinary honesty."

This must be cleared away! He had thought since that last affair, when in the autumn he had paid the bills which had come into his hands, that everything was settled, since no more bills had been presented to him--he had erred, grossly erred. Ottomar in his need had drawn more bills--he himself was the cause of Ottomar being in such need!--why had he at that time so sternly refused him any further assistance? Might he not have known that such embarrassment cannot be at once ended? that when a man's true friends refused their assistance he would turn to false friends who would ruthlessly make profit out of his position, as had evidently been the case here? No matter, no matter! all should be forgiven and forgotten, if Ottomar would only confide in him again, would only allow him to put things straight for him again, as he had so often done. But could he do so? Counting all that he possessed, he could not make up more than about ten thousand thalers. That might not be enough; as much again might perhaps be wanted; it should be found then, it must be found--it must! Ottomar had evidently sent his man for his sash that he might make the necessary communication to his colonel of what had occurred. Herr von Bohl would of course require that the money difficulties should be settled before bringing the matter before a court of honour. He himself would then become surety to the fullest extent for Ottomar's debts; their old friend would for once--once more! not look too closely into it; he would accept the surety and let the matter rest till all was settled. If only Ottomar would not now, at this very time, let himself be led into taking steps--that must be the meaning of the obscure part of Wallbach's letter; what else could the man mean?--steps which could only increase the difficulty of arranging the business. That an officer should put his name to a bill with the most exorbitant interest--that was, alas! for Ottomar no new thing! The fact that he had sent for plain clothes as well as for his sash appeared to point to some such intention. There was not a moment to lose! he had lost only too many in his first bewilderment! The General rang the bell. He was himself in plain clothes this morning, as he usually had been since his retirement; he would put on his uniform. It would take him a few minutes longer, but he always felt a little want of confidence without his uniform, and there must be no want of confidence to-day. As August still did not come after he had rung a second time, he was about to go to his bedroom, when there came a knock at the door, and on his irritable "Come in!" Captain von Schönau entered the room.

"I beg your pardon, General," said Schönau, "for coming in unannounced, but I did not find your servant outside, and my errand here will bear of no delay."

The perfect calmness and concentrated energy which generally marked the Captain's well-cut features had given place to an expression of the deepest anxiety and trouble.

"You come about Ottomar's affairs?" said the General, mastering his fears, and stretching out his hand to the Captain.

"Yes, General, and I beg and implore you to allow me to keep silence as to how I obtained my knowledge of the state of his affairs. But the state is this, that without any delay whatever, and before the matter comes to Herr von Bohl's knowledge, those bills of Ottomar's which are due to-day, and are in the hands of a banker here, whose address I know, must be paid. I know also the total of them. The sum is large, so large that so far as I know, General, neither you nor I alone could pay it; but together we might find it possible if, as I do not doubt, you will put at my disposal all that you can lay your hands upon, and will allow me to take the further management of the affair into my own hands and deal with it as if it were mine."

Schönau had spoken with decision, but in breathless haste, and the General could not doubt but that the Captain's thoughts had taken the same direction as his own. So long as Ottomar was left to himself, and attempted to save himself in his usual fashion, any delay could only increase the difficulties of his position, perhaps make it impossible for his friends, with the best will in the world, to help him. However painfully his pride was wounded by the conviction that he could not avert the threatening danger by his own efforts, he had made up his mind, even while Schönau was speaking, to accept the help so generously offered to him, supposing that he found it possible to repay the debt thus incurred. This he expressed in the fewest words, at the same time explaining the state of his finances and naming the sum which at the utmost could be raised upon the security of his interest in his house.

"Will that suffice!" he asked, "and for how much shall I be indebted to you?"

"It will suffice," said Schönau; "and I only ask now for a line to your banker, giving me full powers."

"You have not answered my last question," said the General, as with rapid pen he wrote the required words.

"I must beg you to excuse me from answering," replied Schönau; "be satisfied that the remainder does not surpass my means, and that it will be an honour and a pride to me to be able to serve you and your family."

The young man's steady clear voice faltered as he said the last words.

As the General continued writing, he remembered that amongst their friends Schönau's and Elsa's names had been often coupled together in jest, with the regret that it might not be done in earnest, as the two were far too good friends ever to fall in love with each other. He had shared this view, not without some regret. Could he have been mistaken? Could Schönau--it would be no detraction from his generosity--be offering help less to the father of his friend than to the father of the girl he loved? In the excited state of his mind these thoughts had taken no more time than was required to carry his hand from the end of one line to the beginning of another; and moved by the sudden consideration, he stopped in his writing, and looked up at Schönau who stood by him.

A sad smile played round the Captain's firmly-closed lips.

"Do not stop, General," said he; "I desire and expect nothing, I assure you, but the continuation of your friendship and that of your belongings."

The General compressed his lips and went on writing. It was bitter--most bitter to him to have to take everything from the full hands of this generous friend, with no power of returning to him anything from his own empty ones--it was too bitter! A cloud came over his eyes; he was forced to break off.

"There is nothing but the signature wanting," urged Schönau, leaning over his shoulder.

"I cannot do it, Schönau!" said the General.

"I implore you," cried the Captain, "life and death hang upon it--oh! my God!"

Startled by a sound at the door, he had turned and saw Colonel von Bohl enter the room.

"Too late!" muttered Schönau; and then, with a desperate effort to save what was already lost: "Your signature. General!"

But the General had turned round, and had seen the Colonel. Ottomar then had been to him already--had told him everything; the affair could go no further without consultation with his commanding officer.

The Colonel's usually severe military aspect had the stamp of a solemn gravity upon it now, as he said, after briefly apologising for his intrusion:

"Have the goodness, my dear Schönau, to leave us. I have a communication to make to the General which will admit of no delay, and which I must make without witnesses."

A word trembled upon Schönau's lips, but he restrained himself, and only bowed and said:

"Certainly, Colonel!" and then turning to the General: "May I ask permission to pay my respects meanwhile to Fräulein Sidonie!" then, after a little pause: "In case you should wish, however, to see me again, I think my visit will be a long one."

He bowed again and went. The General looked after him with fixed, terrified eyes. Evidently there was some understanding between Schönau and the Colonel, although they had not spoken to one another yet; evidently both knew something that Schönau had not said, and that the Colonel had now come to say. He shuddered as before when he had laid down Wallbach's letter; again there came upon him that agony of fear, only now it was no longer lingering at the threshold; now it had come close to him in the person of this iron soldier, in whom, though he had never formed any intimacy with him socially, he had always seen and honoured the pattern of a soldier after his own heart. The door was shut behind Schönau.

"I know all," cried the General; and said to himself, at the same moment, that he had spoken falsely.

The Colonel shook his head.

"You do not know all, General; Schönau could not tell you all, or rather, as I suspect from his manner, would not tell you all."

"Then I am prepared for anything," said the General in a hollow voice.

Again the Colonel shook his head.

"I wish you were, but I think it is impossible. You must be prepared for the worst; your son's bills, which fall due to-day, are all forgeries."

The General fell back as if he had been shot, his hands convulsively grasping the air. The Colonel sprang forward to save him from falling, but with a frightful effort the unhappy man recovered himself before the other could touch him, and stammered: "I--I thank you--it is over--it is----"

He could say no more, he could bear no more, but fell back into his chair, pressing his cold hands to his throbbing temples, and muttering with bloodless lips: "It is all over--all over!"

The Colonel, who could only with great difficulty retain his own composure, drew forward a chair, and said:

"It is terrible, I can offer you no word of consolation, for I know only too well that you will not take it as an extenuating circumstance that it was your name, his father's name, in and by which the fraud was carried out."

"You are right, quite right," said the General; "the fact is irrelevant--absolutely irrelevant."

Had he understood? Did he know what he was saying? The Colonel, who had not taken his eyes off him, almost doubted; the dark eyes, usually so steady, stared vacantly into nothing; the voice that had formerly been so strong and decided, sounded harsh and wavering as if his mind were giving way; the Colonel thought it best to recall him to a sense of the reality, however terrible, by a relation of the circumstances.

He related, therefore, in his dry way, that Ottomar had come to him at about ten o'clock, and had immediately on his entrance announced to him, with the calmness of utter, hopeless despair, that he had that morning sent a challenge by Herr von Lassberg to Herr von Wallbach, on account of certain reports, now current in society, concerning on the one hand his relations with Fräulein Ferdinanda Schmidt, and on the other Fräulein von Wallbach's conduct with Count Golm, which reports could only have originated with Herr von Walbach. That Herr von Wallbach, without further reference to the truth or untruth of these reports, or to his share in spreading them, had refused satisfaction, until Herr von Werben had cleared himself from the suspicion of having lately made use of improper methods to free himself from his money difficulties. He, Herr von Wallbach, would of course be ready to give satisfaction for this insinuation touching his honour in case it should not be substantiated.

"Unfortunately," continued the Colonel, "Herr von Wallbach was but too sure of his facts. His informant, whose name, I know not from what consideration, he refused to mention even to Herr von Lassberg, could only be, according to your son's assertion, the very man with whose assistance this miserable fraud has been carried out; a man whose name, if I remember rightly, has been often mentioned lately in the Wallbach circle--Signor Giraldi."

"Impossible!" exclaimed the General. "My son could not--impossible!"

"I beg your pardon, General," said the Colonel, "I am repeating to you exactly the account which I received from your son's mouth, and which I believe to be perfectly truthful. According to him, from the first moment of their acquaintance, Signor Giraldi manifested the most lively interest in your son. Herr von Werben intimated also that Signor Giraldi had known and encouraged his passion for a certain lady; but he did not go further upon this point, only added that these, as he believed, equally treacherous efforts had proved absolutely useless. Although from his agitation Herr von Werben's account omitted some details, I must suppose that he has been, with regard to his money affairs, also the innocently guilty victim of a villain who has mercilessly made use of his unsuspicious and blind confidence for ends which escape my comprehension. It seems that Herr von Werben's evil genius recommended him, as the easiest means of freeing himself from his difficulties, to speculate on the Exchange, under a feigned name of course; that he enticed him into the wildest speculations, allowed him to win two or three times at first, till suddenly the luck changed and turned more and more against him; and then, as usual, bills had to be given, to which at first your son's name was put, and afterwards, as the sums grew larger, yours, General, was forged, with the help of the credit which Signor Giraldi enjoyed, although he declares himself to be without any available means. That the bills might not come into your hands too soon, they were lodged at first with various bankers, and finally with one alone whose name has unfortunately escaped me. Signor Giraldi undertook to meet them regularly as they fell due, and promised of course to meet them also to-day when the enormous sum of twenty thousand thalers is due. Herr von Werben of course went at once, on the receipt of Herr von Wallbach's answer, to Signor Giraldi's hotel; Signor Giraldi had left in the night. From that moment Herr von Werben seems to have given up the case as hopeless. Signor Giraldi had, as you may suppose, most distinctly engaged to receive him at this hour; the people of the hotel declared that he had not so much as mentioned his destination; it was only when Herr von Werben, whose suspicions were aroused by the porter's manner, offered him a considerable bribe, that he learned from the man that Signor Giraldi had gone to Warnow, where letters were to be forwarded to him. With despair in his heart he hastened to the banker, to hear only what he had expected: that Signor Giraldi had made no arrangements for meeting the bills, which however had not yet been presented, but on the contrary had withdrawn from the bank yesterday afternoon the remainder of the very large sum--half a million, if I mistake not--which he had deposited with them. Half an hour later Herr von Werben was with me."

The Colonel paused; he could no longer endure the sight of the General, who still stared straight before him like a man bereft of his senses. What was he brooding over? Undoubtedly upon the final end of the story, and undoubtedly also upon the same brief and bloody end which in his innermost heart he felt to be unavoidable. But this man was the father! he had not fully considered that before. He had not allowed himself to put forward any extenuating circumstance; now he ransacked his mind for any such circumstance, for any sincere word of comfort even in which he could himself have faith.

But he found none.

"Shall we ask Schönau to come in again?" said he.

The General lifted his fixed eyes, evidently not understanding why the Colonel should ask the question, having probably forgotten that Schönau was still in the house.

The Colonel did not wait for his answer, but rang the bell and desired August, who immediately appeared, having been in the kitchen giving vent to his grief to the old cook, to summon Herr von Schönau. The Captain meanwhile had been passing a most uncomfortable half-hour. With the terrible certainty that he had come too late, and that Ottomar was lost, now that he had officially informed his commanding officer of his misconduct, and that the latter, as was to be expected from his opinions and his ideas of honour, had acquainted Ottomar's father with what had occurred; with the miserable anxiety which increased every moment till it became an unspeakable terror, that now--now--at this very moment might happen, perhaps had already happened, what must plunge his loved and honoured friends into unutterable grief, it was too painful to have to keep up a conversation with the good-humoured, unsuspecting, and talkative old lady upon indifferent or tiresome subjects, such as the bad weather, the next ball at court, or a doubtful passage in "Malortie" which had already cost the compiler of "Court Etiquette" several sleepless nights.

"And, before I forget it," said Sidonie, "have you heard yet of the shocking thing that happened last night, and of which, people tell me, the whole town is talking? I am sorry for our neighbour, poor Herr Schmidt; he is a very respectable sort of man I am told, and he keeps a man-servant who is--only think, my dear Schönau!--a cousin or something of the sort of our August, and August told us--my brother and me--since Elsa has been away he always takes his coffee with me, which he used not to do, but he is always so kind and attentive-- What was I saying, my dear Schönau? oh! yes; it is another proof to me that nothing but harm and evil can come out of societies that have once imbibed the poison of democratic tendencies. A young man who has been educated in those pernicious principles has no safeguard in the critical moments of his life such as religion and family honour, thank God, afford us. At such moment he seizes--not I dare say without some struggles--for after all we are all children of God, however few of us walk in His ways--but still he seizes upon improper, doubtful, desperate, and even criminal means. Millions, so I am told, he has stolen from a safe entrusted to him; and then to take flight at the very moment when he was giving a large party. What recklessness! what a want of the most ordinary delicacy, although, quite between ourselves, my dear Schönau, I do not think it particularly delicate of us to take part in festivities which end in such a way. I indeed might triumph, for what in the world could prove better than such occurrences how necessary is the existence of well-ordered small courts, as schools of morals and manners, of chivalry and true goodness, to our distracted and increasingly democratic society? But heaven forbid that I should feel such pride! My sentiments are those of silent grief and tender pity, all the more that, as you know, Ottomar also could not deny himself this equivocal pleasure. When the models of modern chivalry go and dance at Herr Schmidt's, Herr Schmidt himself, indeed, is none the better for it, as we see, since a crow will always remain a crow; but the swans, my dear Schönau, I only ask you, can the swans retain their purity in such company?"

Schönau was spared the necessity of answering, as August here came to summon him, and he took his leave in a way which so little agreed with his usual irreproachable demeanour, that Sidonie, as the door closed behind him, shook her head, and opined that her little lecture would not come amiss to the Captain.

"I beg your pardon, Captain," said August, as they crossed the hall to the General's room.

Schönau looked round.

"I beg your pardon, Captain, but I am sure something has happened to our young gentleman. Could not you let a faithful servant, sir, who has been eight years in the family, and would go through fire and water for the General, or the Lieutenant, or our young lady, know what it is?"

The tears were rolling over the honest fellow's cheeks, and Schönau's own eyes were moist.

"No," said he, "I cannot tell you. We must hope that all may yet be well."

He gave August his hand.

"God grant it!" said August, wiping his eyes with the other hand; "I don't think man can do much. But I wanted to say, too, if you wished, sir, to speak to our young gentleman, he will be at the lady's in ---- Street--you know, sir."

When Schönau entered he found the two others sitting in silent meditation. At a sign from the Colonel he sat down, but, as the youngest, did not venture to break the unnatural stillness. At last the General raised his head; he seemed to the Captain to have grown years older, and his voice was dull and toneless like that of an old man.

"You are aware, Captain, what--on what account----"

The words came with difficulty from his throat.

"Yes, General," said Schönau. "Herr von Wallbach came to me this morning, with the acknowledged purpose of justifying his conduct in the eyes of Ottomar's friends and those of his family. He was evidently playing a carefully prepared game. For while he skilfully avoided every expression which could directly accuse Ottomar, I could plainly perceive by every word that he was absolutely certain of his facts, and that Signor Giraldi had initiated him into the minutest details of this unfortunate affair. From him also I learned the sum at stake, and the name of the banker who held the bills, who happens to be also my uncle's banker, and with whom I am personally acquainted through business which I have transacted for my uncle--Messrs. Haselow & Co, I hastened there at once, but came too late; Ottomar had just been there. I am sorry to say that his only too easily explained agitation and his distracted questions have at least startled those gentlemen, but I am convinced that I allayed any doubts by asserting positively--I was obliged as matters stood to take the liberty, General--that before this evening all bills due should be taken up. I intended then, when I had collected the money with your assistance, sir, to pay these bills, and--"

The Captain hesitated.

"To save a swindler from his just punishment," said the General, without looking up.

"To save a man whom I venerate beyond all men, from unmerited suffering," returned the Captain.

"That implies a reproach to me, Captain von Schönau!" said the Colonel, knitting his brows.

"Pardon me, Colonel, if I differ from you. I had here no office but that of friendship. You, sir, as Colonel, had received an official communication, of which you were obliged to take notice, the more so that the idea of an arrangement of the affair would not and could not strike you as it would me."

"That is to say, if I understand you rightly, that as soon as the arrangement was effected you would have considered the affair at an end? I confess that, however painful it is to me, I cannot agree with you in that view."

"Pardon me again, I did not intend to say that."

"I should be much obliged to you, Captain, if you would communicate your opinion to me without reservation, in the presence of General von Werben."

"I am obliged to you for the permission, Colonel; the whole thing turned for me upon the question of sparing as much as possible the General and his family, as they so fully deserve to be spared. This of course would require also that my friend should be spared to a certain degree. That is to say, the bills must be paid, as I hoped to be able to pay them with the General's help, and they must be paid as the General's bills. I should then of course have required that my unhappy friend should leave the service, under some pretext that might easily have been found, and should retire absolutely into private life."

Schönau had raised his keen eyes imploringly to the Colonel, who, on his side, never turned his look from the speaker. He understood him now for the first time. In explaining his own plans the Captain had at the same time suggested the line which he wished his commanding officer to adopt as a guide to his action if not to his views. Even in this light the matter was one of great gravity, the Colonel felt and knew this well; but the sight of the venerable man before him so utterly broken down, the remembrance of Ottomar's thousand proofs of courage before the enemy, and all the tender memories and compassionate feelings which crowded upon his mind, all told him that he had already gone to his utmost length, that he could do no more, that notwithstanding what he felt to be his duty, he must accept the compromise suggested by the Captain, at any rate must refrain from putting forward the reasons against it.

"Thank you. Captain," said he; "I hope that, even as regards the claims of the service, this most unhappy affair may be settled as you propose. I am glad on this account, that in the first shock and bewilderment, as I must confess, of what might happen next, I gave Herr von Werben three days' leave of absence, which he had requested on account of private affairs, though he entered into no particulars on the subject, nor did he confide to me the object of the journey which he must undertake in consequence. This leave of absence will be a very proper preparation for sending in his papers, which must be done at the same time with a notification of his wish to retire, and which I will undertake to support with the authorities. I only require first that the bills should meanwhile be settled by Captain von Schönau in the manner suggested."

Schönau gave the Colonel a grateful look and rose. He would not hazard the unexpectedly happy result of the interview, and he knew too well that every word further spoken now might and would endanger it.

"I am already late for my work," said he, "and I must go down to the Staff Office to ask leave of my chief for the day. I will then immediately settle the matter of the bills, if the General will have the goodness to give me his authority, and then, with your permission, inform Herr von Werben, whom I think I know where to find, of what has been decided here. May I ask you, General?" and Schönau pointed towards the table on which lay the unsigned power of attorney.

The Colonel had risen also.

"One moment, gentlemen," said the General.

He walked up to the table, took the paper and tore it into two pieces, which he threw into the waste-paper basket.

It was done without any visible emotion, without any apparent thought of those present, as if some one alone in his study had torn up and thrown away a letter that had now become worthless. The Captain shuddered at the fall of the rustling paper, as a pitiful judge might do as he puts on the black cap.

"I thank you, gentlemen," continued the General, who seemed to have completely recovered his self-possession; "you, Colonel, for the humanity which would have extended to another man's son the mercy you would surely have denied to your own; you, my dear Schönau for the affection which would lead you to sacrifice not merely your fortune, but, like the Colonel, your conviction also.

"I cannot accept this sacrifice, gentlemen. One wrong figure spoils the sum, one false premise nullifies the conclusion. You must allow a father to draw the inference which you from friendship and compassion would not draw. If with the assistance of Captain von Schönau--for alone it would be impossible--I took upon myself my son's fraud and thus--which God forbid!--allowed a man who is himself not rich, like you, my dear Schönau, to impoverish himself for the sake of a swindler, my son would then be allowed, there being nothing further against him, to retire with honour. His Majesty, our gracious commander-in-chief, would certify to the honour of a man, who, before God and his conscience, before his father and you, gentlemen, who cannot at this moment raise your eyes to me, is dishonoured. He could call to account those who doubted his honour, and there would be enough of them--his enemies would see to that--he who must acknowledge to himself that they are in the right, and that in the very act of demanding and receiving satisfaction he was perpetrating another deceit.

"And thus, gentlemen, the one lie--forgive me the word!--would call forth a thousand new lies; and we who sit here should have spun this web of deceit, and must leave those who become entangled in it without warning or aid.

"The situation is impossible, gentlemen! Impossible--even for my son. Guilty as he is, he cannot be so false to the blood of his ancestors as to determine to exist at the mercy of even his best and most generous friends; to live under the sword of the doubtful reputation that must precede and follow him whichever way he turned; to endure the scorn that any man might make him feel as he pleased, without the power of defending himself.

"And it is impossible--to me. Suppose to yourselves that I were the president of a court of honour which had to decide upon this case; forget for a moment that I am a father--and you would, you must answer me that it is impossible."

"I cannot forget it!" cried Schönau wildly; "I cannot!"

"You must," returned the General, "as the Colonel here has already done."

The Colonel was in the most painful embarrassment. The General was undoubtedly right, and he would thus be released from a very difficult position; and yet! and yet!

"I have already expressed my most decided wish to arrange the affair without letting matters proceed to extremities," said he, "I hope the General may yet persuade himself of the possibility of so doing, however difficult I allow such a solution may be. Meanwhile, Herr von Werben is on leave of absence. Bills of exchange have, if I remember rightly"--the Colonel attempted a smile--"three days' law. Let us make use of this delay granted by the law; three days count for a great deal under some circumstances in the life of a man. Shall we leave the General alone now, my dear Schönau?"

The two officers went silently down the street, with their heads bent, and from time to time pressing on their caps more firmly, which the storm that raged through the streets threatened to blow away. At the corner of the cross street Schönau said: "I must take a carriage from here, Colonel."

"You are going to him?"

"Yes, sir."

"It is a hopeless case, my dear Schönau."

"I fear so."

"You will bring me news!"

"Certainly, sir."

"It is eleven o'clock now; I shall be at home till two."

The Colonel pressed the Captain's hand with a warmth very unusual for him, turned up the collar of his overcoat, and went on down the street. Schönau's cab drove quickly up the side street.

The General had remained standing at the door, to which he had accompanied the others, and listened mechanically to their steps upon the stone floor of the hall, then under the window of his room, and passing away down the street.

Now he could hear nothing more, excepting the storm which was raging without. They were gone, these men of the highest honour, the representatives of his class, gone after pronouncing sentence upon the dishonoured and unworthy member of that class.

And that sentence was--death.

Death by his own hand.

And his father must announce it to him.

No! not that; only confirm what he must have already said to himself; only say: "Your father, agrees to what you have already decided upon, and may God have mercy upon your soul!"

He pressed his hands together, and heavy cold drops of sweat stood on his deeply-furrowed brow.

"Must it be? oh God, my God, have mercy upon me! must it be?"

But no word of comfort or hope came to him. All was dumb within him, in his burning head, in his panting breast, and through that dumb silence only the fearful words: "It must be!"

When August entered the room at the sound of the bell, the General was sitting, turned away from him, at his writing-table, leaning his head upon his hand. On the round table behind him, on which he used always to put his finished papers, stood a box, and on the box lay a letter.

August turned cold all over; it was the box in which his master kept the two beautiful old pistols which he had inherited from his father, and on which he set such great store.

"My son is obliged to undertake a long journey," said the General; "and he will require my pistols. The key is in the letter. You will go to him at once, and take him the box and the letter; there is no further message, the letter contains everything. Afterwards I shall go away also; when you come back you will put up my things for a few days' absence."

"Very well, General," said August, merely to say something, and so perhaps to get free of the horror which oppressed him.

With mechanical obedience he had carefully taken up the letter and box, and stopped at the door.

"Shall I say anything kind from you to the Lieutenant, sir?"

There was a few moments' pause before the answer came.

He mustered all his courage:

"Tell him, I hope to God to be with him soon again."

The faithful servant breathed again. He was satisfied now; whatever had happened between the General and the Lieutenant must be something very bad, much worse than it had ever been before, but if the General hoped to meet the Lieutenant again, and that very soon too, there was nothing to break one's heart over, and it would soon be all right, as the Captain had said indeed.

But when August had left the room, the General let his head fall upon his clasped hands, and so sat for a long time, while his whole frame was shaken at times as if with ague, or at others a dull groan was forced from his oppressed breast, as he prayed for his son's soul, and took leave of that son of whom he had been so proud, and who might no longer live now with the shame that he had brought upon himself; the son whom he had so dearly loved, and whom he still loved, oh! how dearly!

At last he rose, an old, broken-down man, with but one thing more for him to do on earth.

For that, he knew that his strength would suffice.

And not trembling and with burning tears as he had loaded the pistol which he sent to his son, but with a steady hand and rigid flaming eyes did he load the second, with which to shoot down the scoundrel who with devilish cunning had enticed his son to disgrace and death.

CHAPTER II.

Ferdinanda had gone to-day, as usual, at her accustomed hour to the studio, and had even attempted to work; but, in spite of the determination which she had long exercised in subduing her talent to her will, and the success which had often attended her efforts, the struggle was vain to-day, and she threw down her tools again.

"For the last time," said she to herself.

She had meant for to-day; but the words, as she spoke them aloud, sounded strangely in the great, high room, as if not she but some one else had said them--a ghostly, prophetic voice speaking from far off, that left her standing and listening in terror lest the voice should speak again.

What need was there of a prophetic voice to convince her of what her own broken heart had said long since?

It was all in vain--her efforts, her struggles, her renunciation, vain--even the tender remonstrances, the gentle warnings, the bright example of the saintly Cilli herself!

How often and often, when that angelic being had left her, had she thrown herself in the dust before the Pietà, which she had modelled two months ago from her, and prayed that the all-merciful love with which the heart of the blind girl overflowed might descend upon her heart too, if it were only a drop! Even that would suffice to extinguish the flames that raged there! But in vain.

Yesterday evening would have proved that, had proof been needed.

How she had debated whether she would accept that girl's invitation, and see him again whom she had solemnly sworn never more to see! She had kept her oath, and had fled at the last moment.

But was such a flight to be called a victory? Had she not been conquered--did she not lie here helpless, shattered, bleeding? Her deadly wound had never been healed, only insufficiently and with difficulty bound up; and now she had torn off the bandages, and might bleed to death! There was no more hope for her.

All else within was dull, dead, and insensible. She had fancied that she felt a kind of respect for Philip's activity and daring--that she was bound to him by at least a feeble bond of fraternal love. And yet this morning, when Aunt Rikchen had brought the terrible news, and had wept and lamented so that it might have moved a heart of stone, she had not even been touched. She had received it like any other piece of sensational intelligence which her aunt was in the habit of reading out of the newspaper and making remarks upon. She seemed turned to stone in the selfishness of her passion, so that it had not even occurred to her to go to her father and say to him, "You have still one child, father."

But could she have said that without lying--was she still at heart the child of the man who, in an hour of madness, had obtained from her that letter of renunciation, every syllable of which had been like a poisoned arrow in her heart? Had he attempted to compensate her, in some measure at least, for so enormous, so unsurpassable a sacrifice, by multiplying his own love to her a hundredfold? Perhaps his pride forbade him that, or he shrank from hers, which he knew so well. Well, then, she was well acquainted with his pride too. She could see his expression if she went to him in his room; she could hear his voice saying, "You have come to me about that wretched man; I wish to hear nothing more about the matter than is, unfortunately, necessary for me to hear. In my house at least I may be spared; so as you have come to see me at last, talk of something else."

No, no, her father did not need her; and for herself! others might importune him with their troubles, and humble themselves before him--her proud father's prouder daughter would sooner die a martyr at the stake!

Cilli was better off. She was sitting now beside her father's sick-bed, and listening patiently to his childish complaints of how foolish he had been to believe in Philip, and how just was the punishment that the savings of many years, so carefully accumulated in a thousand frugal ways, and by unceasing self-denial through so many long years, should have been lost in one night, with the millions of the gambler on whose cards he had staked his little fortune! Then she would comfort the old man, and believe every word that came from her pure lips. And in secret she had another comfort, at which she only hinted sometimes in mysterious words, as if she were ashamed of such divine help--the comfort of believing that, as one consecrated to early death, she needed no earthly consolation.

She might well be secure of that consolation! How transparent her white skin had grown in the last few weeks; how spiritually beautiful the expression of her pure features; how unearthly the look of her great, blind eyes!

Oh, how happy she was! To die so young, before the faintest stain had marred even the hem of her white robes! To find above, if there was anything above--and for her there must surely be--a heaven which she had already created for herself on earth in her pure, humble heart! To rise from joy to bliss--from light into glory! Oh, how happy she was!

And she herself, most miserable! That world above was only a beautiful fable to her ever since her restless brain had begun to work behind her burning brow. Her passionate heart had once desired to possess all earthly joy as the sea receives into its bosom the streams which roll gleefully and exultingly into it, and now it was pining away like the barren desert under a sky of brass; and her vigorous form seemed made to drag the weary burden of life through the never-ending years to a far-distant, desolate grave, like some captive hero who, bending under the heavy load bound upon his strong shoulders, may not hope to break down or fall beneath the lash of his driver like his weaker companion, but must throw away his load, and turn upon his tormentors, crying, "You or I!"

But there was no alternative here. Death was very sure for those who did not fear it!

Did she fear death?

She!

With this chisel, with the first tool from off her table, she would accomplish it with her own hand, if----

If within her deepest, inmost heart, where some spring that she had thought dried up must still be bubbling, a siren voice had not wailed and whispered: "Do not die! for so you would kill me, the last and mightiest of all the sisters. Only one moment is mine, and there is night before me and after me; but this one moment surpasses the bliss of eternity!"

In the next room to her had been noise and whistling and singing the whole morning, louder than usual, as the master had been absent to-day; and there had been much talk as to whether, when there was a Mrs. Sculptor--some wit had suggested this--things would be quite so lively in the studio. Now all was still, only the storm howled and raged round the silent house, and shook and rattled the tall windows.

How had he endured the disappointment of yesterday? Was he raging like the storm without? Was he the storm? Was it he who tapped at the window-pane, and knocked at the door? Good heavens! there was really a knock at the door! Was it possible! had he at last, at last broken the final fetter, and come here to carry her away?

With trembling limbs she rose, her heart beating as if it would break in joyful terror.

There again! at the closed window now! and was there not a cry, "Ferdinanda?"

With a shriek she rushed forward, tore back the bolts, flung open the door: "Bertalda! Good God! he is dead!"

"Not yet," said Bertalda, "but he is not far off it."

The girl's usually laughing rosy face was pale and changed; she was breathless from the haste she had made, and could hardly bring out her words, as with trembling knees she sank into the nearest chair.

"He is ill! where? in your house? for God's sake, Bertalda, speak!"

Ferdinanda stood before the girl, pressing her hands in hers, and putting back the ruffled hair from her brow.

"Speak! speak!"

"There is not much to say," said Bertalda, raising herself up, "only you must come with me at once, or he will shoot himself. He wanted to do it before, and now his own father sends him a pistol to do it with! There is an officer--Schönau is his name--with him now; but those sort of people talk such nonsense--America! I dare say! He will never leave my room if you do not come to him and tell him that you would remain with him if he had forged his father's name for a hundred thousand instead of this miserable twenty thousand. Why, my goodness! an Englishman once offered me forty thousand, but I didn't like him, so there was an end of it; but these men are all like children with their foolish ideas of honour. I only tell you that you may not be startled by anything, because you, too, are so absurd about such things, and if you only look-- There! you are just like the others; you are heartless, the whole lot of you."

Bertalda said all this behind Ferdinanda's back, as the latter after her first words was moving wildly about the studio, looking for her things, and now stood still with her hand pressed to her forehead.

"If only I were you," said Bertalda, "I would go with him to the devil if he would take me. He is not wise, he would get more from me than from you. Why did I sit with him and comfort him all night long, when I was dead tired and might have been sleeping in my comfortable bed--or on the sofa even, or the carpet?--it would be all the same to me, if only the poor boy were at ease. And this morning again! I should like to see the woman who would go through it for her husband! That would be a fine fuss! and I, like a good-humoured fool, agree to everything, and persuade him instead of shooting himself to go to Sundin, and farther on--I don't know the name of the place--and shoot Count Golm, merely to change the current of his thoughts, for he does not care one bit about his so-called betrothed--and then I rush headlong here, and--well, what do you want?"

Ferdinanda had hardly heard or understood a word of Bertalda's rambling speech. She had been pulling out and ransacking drawers from the desk which stood in a corner of her studio near the window, and now sitting down opened her blotting-book.

"What are you about?" repeated Bertalda.

"I have enough to begin with," said Ferdinanda, still writing; "a thousand thalers! There! take up the packet--thank God! I only received it yesterday."

"That is always something to begin with," said Bertalda; "I had already offered him what I had, but of course he would not take it from me. But do let that scribbling alone. What are you doing now?"

"Here!" cried Ferdinanda.

She folded the paper on which she had been writing, and held it out to Bertalda.

"What am I to do with it?"

"Take it to my father, whilst I go to Ottomar."

"Oh! I dare say!" said Bertalda. "I am not generally afraid of people, but I won't have anything to do with your father. Just leave it there. Some one will find it and give it to him, and if not it can't be helped."

"I will give it to him," said a gentle voice.

Ferdinanda started up with a cry, as she saw Cilli, who had entered as usual by the door which led from the studio into the narrow passage between the house and garden, and unnoticed by the others had been present for some minutes, and had heard with her quick ears every word of the latter part of their conversation.

"Oh! my better self, my good angel," cried Ferdinanda; "you are come to tell me that I am doing right, that I may, that I ought to follow him as my heart tells me, through shame and grief, through misery and death!"

"And may God be with you!" said Cilli, laying her hands on Ferdinanda's head, who had thrown herself on her knees before her;--"with you both! He only asks for love, and yet again for love, the love that beareth all things. You can now--you can both now prove that your love is true love! Give me the letter to your father! and farewell!"

She bent down and kissed Ferdinanda on the forehead, as the other rose sobbing and gave the letter into her hand.

"You look so pale, Cilli, and your dear hands are cold as ice. Is your father very ill?"

"He is very ill; but the doctor says he will get over it. He is asleep now--Aunt Rikchen is with him, so I have plenty of time."

She smiled her own sad sweet smile.

"And now, farewell! for the last time!"

"Come," cried Bertalda impatiently; "come, we have lost only too much time already! Whatever you want besides I can supply you with."

Ferdinanda was forced to tear herself away from Cilli. In her own passionate way she had learned within the last few weeks to love, and honour, and even worship the fair being who had come to her, as the good Samaritan came to the wounded man in the burning desert sand. An inward foreboding warned her that this was a farewell for ever, that she should never again behold these angelic features. And to-day the face in its transparent clearness seemed hardly that of an earthborn creature.

Was she who seemed fragile as a breath, who was like a ray of light from a better world upon this dark sinful earth, to take this earthly burden upon her slender shoulders, to touch with her pure hands these dark sorrows.

"I will go to my father myself!" cried Ferdinanda.

"Then you may just as well stay here altogether," said Bertalda.

"Go, go!" said Cilli.

And now again it was Ferdinanda who thought that Bertalda could not quickly enough put on the cloak which she had thrown off in the hot studio, or find the bonnet which she had flung down anywhere.

"I called a cab as I came," said Bertalda; "it is waiting at the door; we shall be at my house in five minutes." At the house door there were two cabs waiting.

Bertalda helped Ferdinanda to get into the first, and was in the act of following her, when the driver of the second carriage asked whether the gentleman was not coming.

"What gentleman?"

"The one who called me. Doesn't he belong to you?"

"I know nothing about him," said Bertalda, getting in and shutting the door behind her.

The vehicle was hardly in motion before Antonio came out of the house, with a broad-brimmed hat upon his black hair, and a large cloak over his shoulders--he had brought them both from Italy, and they were the first things which he had laid his hands upon--and with a small travelling-bag under his cloak into which he had thrust a change of linen. He rushed up to the driver of the second cab:

"I told you to wait at the corner!"

"I thought as there was another one at the door, and I had seen you run in here--"

"No matter--follow that cab--at the same distance that we are now, not a step nearer, and when the other stops, pull up!"

"All right," said the driver, "I understand."

CHAPTER III.

The door closed behind the retreating figures, and Cilli was left alone in the studio. She sat down on a low stool, holding in her lap the paper which Ferdinanda had given her, and supporting her head upon her hand.

"He will not understand it," she murmured; "he will be very angry; no one will understand it, not even Reinhold himself; even he could not feel with me as I feel. Oh! my poor heart, why do you throb so wildly! Can you not bear it a little longer, only a little longer! Let me fulfil this, it may be your last service!"

She had pressed her two hands against her bosom, as with stoical fortitude she bore the fearful pain, the agonising breathlessness caused by her palpitating heart, as had so often happened in the last few days. The terrible attack passed off, but the exhaustion which followed was so great, that she made several vain efforts to rise. She succeeded at last, and feeling for the table on which she knew a jug of water and glasses always stood, drank some water.

"I can do it now," she murmured. And yet she often thought she must break down, as she languidly put one weary foot before the other, and slowly, slowly groped her way from the studio, and through the narrow path between the house and garden. As she passed the door of her own dwelling, she stood still and listened at the foot of the stairs which led to their rooms above. All was still, and her father was sleeping under good Aunt Rikchen's care. He would not miss her; her poor father did not even know that her dearest wish, that she might die after him, and so remain with him till he breathed his last, and spare him the pain of seeing his child die, could hardly now be fulfilled. Her poor father! and yet not so poor as the proud lonely man to whom she was going.

She had reached the house and got as far as the carpeted marble stairs. A step came down towards her, and she stood still, leaning against the balustrade and smiling up at the new comer.

"Dear Grollmann!"

"Good gracious, Fräulein Cilli! How came you here? And how ill you look! Dear me! you ought to go to bed at once!"

"I have no time for that, dear Grollmann, but I do feel very weak; will you help me up the stairs?"

"Why, where do you want to go?"

"To him--to Herr Schmidt."

Grollmann shook his head.

"Dear Fräulein Cilli, you know that I would do anything in the world to please you, and particularly to-day, when you are in such trouble about your good father; but you really cannot possibly go to Herr Schmidt. If you want anything for your good father--and he has been asking after him already, although he has so many things on his mind--I will take an opportunity of saying it--"

"It is not about my father," said Cilli, "nor about myself, but I have such difficulty in speaking, dear Grollmann."

The old servant was awestruck as she raised her blind eyes to him. He did not venture another word of reply, not even to ask her what was that paper which she had slipped inside her dress, and led her silently and carefully up the remaining steps to the master's door.

"Shall I announce you, Fräulein?" he whispered.

"Only open the door, dear Grollmann."

The old man hesitated for a moment, and then opened the door boldly, guided the blind girl across the threshold with outstretched arm, without himself entering, closed the door behind her, and dropped into a chair close by, resting his chin upon his hands.

"I must take the poor child downstairs again," he muttered; "she will not stay long."

Uncle Ernst, who was walking up and down the room with his hands behind his back, lost in sullen meditation, had not heard the gentle opening of the door. Now, having reached the farther end of the room, he turned and started.

"Cilli!" he exclaimed with a long-drawn breath.

"Cilli," he repeated, as he went up to her, where she silently awaited him.

He was standing before her, strangely moved by the contrast between the dark and dismal thoughts in which he had been plunged, and the angelic, radiant face into which he now looked; and his hand, which had taken hers, trembled, and his voice shook, as he led her to a chair and said: "What brings you to me, my child? Is your father worse?"

"I think not," answered Cilli, "although I know that he cannot last long."

"That is all stuff and nonsense," said Uncle Ernst, the gentleness of his tone contrasting oddly with the rough words. "Those three hundred pounds would not have made you happy. And what have I done to him that he should be afraid that I would not take care of him and you if it came to the worst?--his Socialism--pooh! He will always remain for me what he is--one of the few honest men in a world of rogues."

"I know how kind you are," answered Cilli, "and I had meant to come to you this morning to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all that you have done for us, and will do for my poor father when I am gone."

"I will not hear anything about that," said Uncle Ernst.

The ghost of a smile flitted over Cilli's pale face.

"Death has an eloquent voice," said she; "I trusted to that when I dragged myself to you, and hoped that my voice, which comes from a heart where Death has taken up his abode, might penetrate to your heart, which, stern as it often seems, is so good and kind to the poor and desolate, to the helpless and the unhappy."

Her voice was so low that Uncle Ernst had some difficulty in understanding her. What did the poor child want? she had evidently something still upon her mind.

"Tell me what it is, Cilli," said he; "you know that I can refuse you nothing, however difficult it might be to me to grant it."

"You ought not to refuse me this, although it will be difficult to you; for you are very proud, and the noblest of the angels fell through pride, and your pride is bleeding already today from a deep wound--forgive me if I touch it--I know it must be painful, but our Lord upon the cross forgave His persecutors, forgave all men, and all who sin, however wise they may be in worldly wisdom, they know not what they do. But he who sins in men's eyes because he loves, not himself but another, to whom his whole heart and soul belong, so that he no longer feels his own pangs but suffers a hundredfold from those of another--for such a poor loving soul every good man feels divine compassion; how should not a father then, who ought to stand in the place of the Father in heaven to His children on earth, and should be perfect even as the Father in heaven is perfect! Oh! have compassion upon Ferdinanda!"

She had slipped from her chair on to her knees, her hands crossed upon her breast, her sightless eyes turned to him who had always moved about in the darkness that surrounded her like a demon in his height and stateliness, but fearful also as a demon. Had her feeble voice reached the unattainable height where he was enthroned? or reached it only to unloose the storm, the thunder of his wrath, which she had so often heard rolling and raging above her head? Would he stoop down to her and raise her up, as he had raised so many from the dust, with his strong helpful hands? Then she heard--by his long-drawn breathing--that he was bending over her, and she felt the strong hands raise her and replace her carefully in her chair. She took his powerful hands in her own weak trembling ones, and guided them to her quivering lips.

"No, no, my child! You have spoken the truth, but I am not angry with you--not in the least. And that paper there, did she give you that!"

"I do not know what she has written," said Cilli, taking the paper from her bosom, "You ought not to look at the words; they are wild, perhaps bad words! but how can a poor human creature know at such a moment what she does or says?"

He had hastily run his eye over the lines. "Ferdinanda has eloped--when?"

"About half an hour ago--perhaps more; I do not know exactly."

"Did he carry her off?"

Cilli, from whom Ferdinanda had long had no secrets, mentioned Bertalda's name and residence.

"So even this time it was not himself!" murmured Uncle Ernst with a bitter smile. "Thank you, my dear child, thank you for your honesty. I have always thought highly of you, I see that I did not think nearly highly enough. And now let me call my sister to take you back and see you into bed; I am sure you ought to be there."

"She is sitting at my father's bedside," said Cilli; "she has been there these two hours. I can go very well alone."

"Then I will take you."

"If you are really grateful to me, if I am not to think that I have been here in vain, you have something else to do now; pray let me go alone."

She rose from her chair and folded her hands again upon her bosom.

"Go alone then, if you really wish it."

She moved slowly to the door, there stood still, and turning round raised both hands with an imploring gesture to him, as he gazed sadly and gloomily after her, then felt for the handle. The door opened from the outside. Grollmann, as before, stretched out his arm without crossing the threshold, received Cilli's groping hand in his, and shut the door behind her.

"They are all leagued together against me for good or evil," murmured Uncle Ernst; "Reinhold, Rike, that old man, all, all! And she, good child, who is probably worth more than all of us, she brings me this with her pure innocent hands--this!"

He stared fixedly at the paper which he held in his hand.

"I bid you farewell--for ever! You do not need my love, and yours I have sufficiently experienced! You have crushed my heart and broken my spirit; you have ruthlessly sacrificed my heart, my soul, my love to your pride, as a fanatical priest slaughters the lamb at the altar of his gods. And that other--his father! Truly when the spirit has been killed, it is an act of mercy to kill the body! Wrap yourself then in your pharisaic virtues, enjoy your arrogant pride! For us, welcome disgrace! welcome shame! welcome death!"

"So be it then--death!"

He tore the paper in half, and tore the pieces again and again, flung the fragments on the floor, put his hands behind his back, and began once more to pace up and down the room as he had been doing when Cilli came in.

As he thus moved, with burning downcast eyes, he set his foot upon one of the fragments which were fluttering about here and there. He tried to put it aside, but only ground it deeper into the soft carpet. "Bah!" said he.

But yet he turned and took another direction through the room. At that moment an insecurely fastened window was blown open by the storm, and the fragments fluttered round about him like snow-flakes.

"They want to drive me mad," he cried out loud; "but I will not go mad! Oh Lord, my God! what have I done that Thou shouldst so persecute me! What more can we unfortunate men do than act according to our knowledge and conscience! Have not I done so, so long as I can remember? If our knowledge and our wisdom are imperfect, is that our fault? Why dost Thou punish us for that of which we are not guilty? Surely Thou art pledged to help us in time of need! If Thou hast spoken to me by the mouth of this poor blind girl, I will sacrifice my conviction, my understanding, I will be blindly obedient as a child--if Thou hast spoken to me by her!"

He pressed his hands against his throbbing temples; everything grew dim before his eyes; he staggered to the open window, offering to the storm which raged against him his burning forehead and his breast, from which he had torn open his shirt.

And through the raging storm he heard a voice crying: "Help! help!"

Did he only hear without, the echo of the cry within him?

But there--in the courtyard--was not that Grollmann rushing with uplifted hands from the open door of Justus's studio towards the house? while "Help! help!" sounded clearly in his ear!

"That poor girl! Is it Cilli?" he cried.

But Grollmann did not hear him, and ran into the house; Uncle Ernst hastened out of his room.

"Lean well upon my arm, Fräulein," said Grollmann, as he took charge of Cilli at the door. He would have given anything to know what she had been talking about so long with his master, but she was so fearfully pale, and her breathing was so quick and hurried, that he had not the heart to ask her any questions, even if the answer could have been given in one word. As they reached the top step she was obliged to stop, however; but she pressed his hand almost imperceptibly, it was all she could do, and smiled at him.

"That is as good as an answer," thought the old man, and aloud he said:

"Now, don't you speak another word, Fräulein Cilli; but if you would like me to carry you, just nod. I am an old fellow, and you might be my granddaughter."

She smiled again, and shook her head; but he did almost carry her down the stairs and across the corner of the courtyard, into the narrow passage between the garden and the neighbouring house, till they came to the little back door leading into Herr Anders' studio.

"Here," said Cilli.

"Only a few steps more," said Grollmann.

"I have already taken leave of my father," said Cilli.

The old man did not know what she meant, and thought the poor child's mind was wandering at last; but still he had not the courage to make any further objection as she pointed, with an imploring gesture, to the little door, as though wanting him to open it. He did so, and, extending her hand to him, she said:

"You may leave me now, and may God bless you!"

"And you, Fräulein!" said Grollmann.

But he hardly knew what he said, as, unable to tear himself from the doorway, he followed with his eyes the slender figure as, sometimes raising her arms for a moment, like a bird about to take wing, thought Grollmann, she moved amongst all the casts and models and the thousand and one things which crowded the studio, as if she really could see, thought Grollmann.

Near one of the two high windows, in the place where Herr Anders himself generally worked, stood a white marble bust upon a small pedestal. It was a portrait of Herr Anders' betrothed, and Grollmann, who had lived so long among artists that he was something of a connoisseur himself, had been delighted with the portrait, as it grew more and more like every day--really a speaking likeness, Grollmann had said.

She went up to the bust, and remained standing there, Grollmann at first thought because she could go no farther, and must rest herself there, for she was leaning against it as if she could not stand alone. Then she raised her hands and stroked the face--her hands were as white as the marble--and nodded to it just as if she were talking to the bust, and kissed it as if it had been a living creature, and sat down upon the stool which stood near, and on which Herr Anders used to stand when he could not reach up to his figures, and leant her head upon the pedestal, and did not move again.

"Poor child," said Grollmann, "she will fall asleep there and catch her death of cold; it is quite cold now, and there will be no more fire made up till the gentlemen come back at two o'clock. I must take her upstairs."

So he came into the studio, and went up to her very gently--not that that was necessary, for he was quite determined to wake her if she had fallen asleep, but the nearer he came the more gently he moved.

And now he was standing by her.

"Poor thing," he thought to himself, "she really is asleep already, with half-shut eyes, and how sweetly she is smiling! It really would be a pity to wake her. If I had a cloak or--there is a rug lying there!"

Grollmann moved a step forward, and struck against a board, which made a sudden noise. The old man turned round much annoyed--he had certainly awoke her. But her eyes were still half shut, and she was smiling as before.

"It is very odd," thought Grollmann, and stooped nearer to the sleeper, and then raised himself, trembling in every limb, and ran as fast as his old legs would carry him out of the studio into the house after Aunt Rikchen, whom he had just seen going in, crying in wild terror, "Fräulein Rikchen, Fräulein Rikchen! help, help!" while yet he was saying to himself that no help could avail now.

But before he could get up to the good lady and communicate his terrible news, Justus and Meta had entered the studio from the other side.

CHAPTER IV.

They were returning from a long expedition into the very heart of the town, where they had been wandering about since the morning, looking for a wonderfully-carved oak wardrobe which Justus had heard yesterday from his friend Bunzel, was to be found there in the possession of a broker. Meta, indeed, had humbly suggested that it might be wiser to go first to some large shop, there to choose and order their necessary furniture, and then to look for the fanciful part; but Justus had proved to her that the whole matter had begun with fancy, and that they could not be wrong in pursuing the same road a little further--firstly, because the road, on the whole, was particularly pleasant; and secondly, because the temptation of getting, probably for a mere song, a genuine Nuremberg wardrobe of the beginning of the sixteenth century, was not to be resisted by a true artist mind. Meta's great good sense had, happily, seen the force of his reasoning, and so they had gone joyfully on their way.

But unfortunately this immensely-important conversation about the unique and priceless wardrobe had taken place yesterday evening at a period of the supper when friend Bunzel's communications had begun to be somewhat wanting in lucidity, and the broker's direction had consequently remained in an obscurity which Justus considered to be highly appropriate to the whole affair, and which gave it quite a local colour, but which still, in the interests of art, must be cleared up, and, if they put their wits and their understandings together, certainly soon would be cleared up.

So they drove on, at first through broad, straight streets, then through narrower and more twisted ones, till their driver, whom they had hired by the hour, declared that he had come as far as he could with his horse and carriage, and that if his fare took the matter as a joke, as they seemed to be doing, he did not see the fun of it; and that as for the "old wardrobe" of which they were always talking as they got in and out, he believed it to be nothing but a hoax.

"Heartless barbarian!" said Justus, as the cab rumbled on over the antediluvian pavement. "No ray of light has illuminated his benighted soul; he has no faith in the woodcarving of the sixteenth century--perhaps not even in Isaac Lobstein! How do matters stand with your heart, Meta?"

Meta replied that her heart was all right, but that she was beginning to feel very hungry. They had better try this one street more, and if Herr Isaac Lobstein did not live here, then she should certainly propose to beat a retreat.

And behold! their heroic perseverance was crowned by success; Herr Isaac Lobstein did live in the street, and was in possession of a wardrobe for sale, indeed a whole row of wardrobes, which all had the immense advantage over the cabinet that the young couple were looking for, of being bran-new; while as for oak, that was quite out of fashion, and not the right sort of wood either, as it made the furniture much too heavy, which in the changes of residence that "young couples" so often found necessary, according to all experience, was a very important matter.

And Herr Isaac Lobstein smiled so benevolently as he said all this in a tone of paternal remonstrance, that the "young couple," feeling quite crushed, bought the first wardrobe that came to hand for a very considerable sum, and when they found themselves in the street again, looked at each other with very long faces.

"I think, Meta," said Justus, "our driver was not far wrong. Hang that fellow Bunzel! but he shall pay me for this!"

And therewith he made so fearful and comically-furious a grimace, that Meta burst into a fit of laughter, in which Justus, after a moment's consideration, joined her.

And during their long drive back to the studio, where Justus had to make some arrangements before spending the afternoon with Meta's hostess, they were perpetually breaking into laughter again, although between whiles they were talking in all seriousness of the most weighty matters; Philip's flight which was simultaneous with the breaking up of the company, and how with all the trouble which this break up had brought to so many people, it had done this good, that it had at last obtained consent to their marriage from Meta's father, as Reinhold had foretold; and what effect the affair would have upon Reinhold and Elsa's fate; and how poor Herr Kreisel, who had put his savings into Sundin-Wissows, had been quite off his head this morning from the shock, and trouble and anxiety for Cilli, whose future he now saw unprovided for, so that he had had to go to bed; and how foolish it was of the good old man, as he must know that his friends, and Uncle Ernst especially, would never forsake him or his dear Cilli.

On this topic they gradually became quite grave, especially Meta, who sat for some time quite still in her corner, till suddenly sitting up, she said:

"Do you know, Justus, we must take care of Cilli, for you know if she were not blind, dear thing, you would have married her, only that if she were not blind and could see what a dreadfully ugly old darling you are, she would not have been in love with you, for you know the poor thing is very much in love with you, as I am a little, you know."

Herewith she threw herself into Justus's arms, and cried as if her heart would break, and then laughed again as Justus suggested that she had better have both windows shut, so that he had much trouble in restoring her to anything like her natural self, as they crossed the court to the studio.

"For you see," said Justus, "it is all nonsense, begging your pardon, though Reinhold did suggest something of the kind. You know better than other people that I am not over-modest, but as for Cilli, you see she is simply an angel. She has shown herself so more than ever lately, in the way she has borne with poor Ferdinanda, who really does not deserve it, as only an angel could. And it was not because she was blind that I did not fall in love with her, and would not have married her, but because I could only fall in love with and marry a human being, and you were the human being, and so----"

They had by this time entered the studio.

"Hush!" said Meta. "Don't speak so loud; it sounds as if we were in a church here, you know, like that time when Cilli--oh! the poor dear is sitting there; I think she must be asleep."

"Where?"

"There, under my bust."

But Justus needed but one glance to see with his sharp artist's eyes, that the sleep in which the pale angel form was lying, was the sleep that knows no waking.

His first idea was to spare Meta the sad sight, and he caught her hand to lead her away, but the shock which she saw expressed in his varying countenance had told her all more plainly than even the sight of the sleeping figure. She trembled all over, but she held fast the hand which he had given to her, and they went together up to the dead girl, and looked in solemn silence into the smiling face.

"She has been praying for us," whispered Justus; "the last thought of her pure soul."

Tears choked his voice. Meta threw herself sobbing on his breast.

"Oh! Justus, Justus, how we must love each other!"

A sound close by made them look up. It was Uncle Ernst, who had hastily entered by the open studio door, and seeing the strange group had been suddenly seized by a terrible misgiving of what had happened. He had come nearer to them, and stood now close behind them with his arms folded across his chest, and his eyes fixed upon the dead face.

Grollmann and Aunt Rikchen came next, Aunt Rikchen trembling, and often sobbing aloud, but valiantly struggling with her sobs and tears as often as they threatened to dim her eyes, proving the truth of what she had always maintained of herself, that in spite of everything she was a true sister of her brother, and that when there was any need for it, she would always be found at her post.

It was she who took all necessary measures with due forethought and decision; and only when the fair corpse had been laid upon a hastily-contrived bier to be carried into the other house, and she was about to follow, and her brother, who had let her do everything quietly, took her hand, and said with a long-drawn breath, "Thank you, Rikchen," was the warm brave heart suddenly stirred to its depths, and she would have broken into loud weeping if Uncle Ernst had not said peremptorily, but in a kindly tone such as she had never heard from his mouth, "Let that be, Rikchen! There are so many things to be done still."

"God knows there are!" thought Aunt Rikchen, but she did not say it, and followed the procession which was moving to the door.

But Uncle Ernst was standing again as before, with his arms folded across his breast, and looking fixedly at the spot where in his mind's eye he still saw the same touching picture.

"Death was in her heart!" he murmured, "and she knew it. She said it so meekly, and I did not understand it. There are no more miracles, but there are signs given to those who have eyes to see. I asked for a sign!"

His arms relaxed their pressure, and two burning tears dropped from his eyelashes and rolled down his furrowed cheeks to his grey beard. He looked round timidly, but no one had seen him weep.

With his stately head bent low, but a step as firm as ever, he left the studio.

CHAPTER V.

An hour later--at a few minutes before twelve--a carriage drove up to the departure-platform of the Berlin and Sundin railway station, and August jumped quickly from the box to assist the General. The General mounted the steps, while August looked round in vain for a porter.

"I told you so," called the driver, handing the small portmanteau to August. "We ought to know!"

"Perhaps it is all the better so," thought August, hastening after his master, who was standing in the empty hall at the booking-office, before the closed windows of which the green curtains had been let down.

"So the man was right after all," said the General.

"Yes, sir," said August.

A porter, who was passing by, confirmed the driver's information. The day-train went at eleven o'clock since the first of this month. The next through train was at midnight, as before. A superior official now joined them, who had served in the regiment which the General had last commanded as colonel.

"If the General were in a hurry, as he seemed to be, there was another gentleman who had come too late a few minutes ago, and who had asked for a special. There would be some difficulty about it, as all the trains had been sent off to-day with two engines, on account of the storm which was said to be raging fearfully towards Sundin. And they were obliged to keep a few engines in reserve, in case of any accident happening, particularly as the telegraphic communication with Sundin was already broken off, and they could only get news in a roundabout way. Still something might be managed perhaps. The gentleman had just gone to speak to the stationmaster, who was out there by the goods sheds, but he would be back again directly. Would the General be good enough to wait till then?"

With these words the man opened the door of the first-class waiting-room for the General, who followed him mechanically. The other then said that he would himself go and see after the matter, and would bring him back word, and so left the room. August, who had followed with the portmanteau, asked if the General had any more orders.

The General told him to wait; he did not know yet what he should do, and August went away greatly disturbed in mind; it was the first time since he had been in the General's service that he did not know what he was going to do.

The unhappy man was in fact in a state of mind bordering on madness. After the terrible reckoning with his son, all his remaining strength had been concentrated upon one idea--revenge, immediate, implacable revenge upon the wily villain, the hypocritical scoundrel who--he felt sure of it at heart, although his disturbed reason could not penetrate the details of the plot--had now robbed him of his son, as formerly of his sister, and heaped shame and disgrace upon the proud name of Werben. At the moment when, with this one thought in his mind, he entered the carriage which was to take him to the railway, two letters arrived, one by the post in Elsa's handwriting, and a note brought by Schönau's servant. He had opened Elsa's letter at once, and hastily glanced at the few lines, but without really understanding the contents. How could he? How could he have sense, feeling, or understanding for anything in the world, before he knew what Schönau's note contained? But he knew it already! It could be but one thing! Schönau had not ventured to come himself to say, "He is dead!"

He sat thus a long time, with the fatal note in his trembling hand, and at last, when they were close to the station, by a mechanical impulse he tore it open and read it, only to crush the paper in his hand afterwards, and thrust it into his pocket, while he leaned back in a corner of the carriage with a ghastly smile upon his pale worn face.

He was walking up and down now in the great empty room, from the looking-glass between the glass doors which led on to the platform, to the door into the entrance hall, and then back again, stopping only sometimes at the centre table in front of the little box which stood there, once even stretching out his hand to it, and then with a shake of the head pursuing his walk.

Was there any sense in it now? Might he not just as well have left at home his pistol, the caps for which were in his pocket! Or better still have remained at home himself, let things take their course, and people have their own way? At any rate confess to himself his helplessness in regard to things or men, and that he was a broken-down old man, good for nothing but to look on idly at the battle of life as others fought it out, however melancholy, perverse, and miserable the spectacle might be!

Melancholy for him whose heart was crushed and broken, even where formerly he would have looked with satisfaction--his Elsa's happiness. It was not indeed the happiness of which he had dreamed for her, but to that he was resigned; it was not a brilliant lot which she had chosen for herself, but she loved the man, and, other considerations apart, he was worthy of her love. And it could not be helped either when a stranger knew her secret, that the whole world should know it at the same moment that it was confided to her father.

And yet! and yet! Why should it have happened just now, just to-day? She was not to blame, neither was he whom she would own as hers before all the world; but upon her name and his their nearest relations had heaped such shameful guilt, had so dragged both the humble and the noble name through the mire, that every beggar might tread upon them with impunity. Death would have atoned for so much, perhaps almost for all! The worst part of the disgrace would have been hidden in the darkness of the grave, and that which had been left behind on earth--the whispers of malicious tongues--would soon have been silenced! Had he required too much? Was death more bitter than the agony of mind which he had endured in these last terrible hours? And if it were, Ottomar must surely know how to die; he could not add to the disgrace of his forgeries, the thousand times greater disgrace of a cowardly flight. And could Schönau have given his consent to this shameful course? He had not done so with goodwill evidently; he hinted even at accompanying circumstances, which he could have wished omitted, but which appeared to have been unavoidable, though he could not take upon himself the responsibility of them. Could this man think and write so, whom he had often, and not merely in jest, called a knight sans peur et sans reproche? Had he so entirely misconceived his and the Colonel's opinion? Did he remain the sole survivor of an earlier and better time, incomprehensible to the present generation as they were incomprehensible to him? What difference remained then between a nobleman and officer and an adventurer who runs away from his creditors, a clerk who flies with his master's strong box--what difference between Ottomar von Werben and Philip Schmidt? There was none; the bankrupt tradesman and the aristocratic forger stood on the same level, only that the former might say, "I at least had not the face to compromise an honest man's daughter, to morally compel my father to go to the girl's father, and put himself in the humiliating position of being refused--brightly and wisely, as the result shows!"

To the General's over-excited imagination the scene of that morning suddenly presented itself as if it had only happened an hour before. The day had been gloomy, like this day; the autumn wind had howled round the walls as the March wind was doing to-day, and the rain had pattered against the window just as it did now. It had been a terrible hour, when he had been forced to humble himself so deeply before the proud plebeian, even though the man himself bore the stamp of nobility--which nature can give and which life often confirms--upon his broad forehead, and on every feature of his fine and venerable countenance. If he should ever again meet this man, should have to endure the look of those deep, shining eyes, where, where could he turn his own?

The General, who had been standing, hardly knowing where he was, with his fixed eyes to the floor, looked up as one of the glass doors on to the platform opened with some noise, and the man whom he had just been seeing in his mind's eye entered, and closing the door came towards him.

He passed his hand across his forehead. Had his senses really forsaken him? Was that the reason why this vision so little resembled the reality?--why the fire in the deep eyes was extinguished?--why the head, which had been held so high, was now bent low?--why the voice which now addressed him was not harsh with anger and hate, as it had been that morning, but a deep, gentle voice, gentle as the words he now began to understand, and which roused him to a sense of reality?

"I have just heard. General von Werben, that you also wish to go to Sundin; I must suppose, for the same business that takes me there. I have been promised a special train in half an hour. Will you do me the honour of making use of it also?"

The General's stern, self-controlled countenance looked so distracted and wild with grief, the clear, commanding eyes looked so bewildered, so helpless, that Uncle Ernst could not but feel, as the other had done before, that he was now the stronger and more collected. With a courteous movement he pushed forward a chair to the General, who was leaning unsteadily against the table, and when he mechanically followed the suggestion, seated himself opposite to him.

"I take it for granted. General, that you have received Herr von Schönau's letter, and that your presence here is the result of that letter?"

The General appeared not to have understood him, and, indeed, he had only heard the words. What did Herr Schmidt know of Schönau's letter? He uttered the question as it crossed his mind. It was now Uncle Ernst's turn to look up in surprise.

"Have you not received a letter from Herr von Schönau?"

"Yes."

"Mentioning that your son--has gone away?"

The General nodded.

"An hour ago--from this station--to Sundin?"

"To Sundin?" repeated the General. Strange that he had not guessed that at once! If Ottomar intended to live, his first thought must naturally be revenge upon that scoundrel--or was it rather the last thing that he wished to accomplish before his death? He might have left it to his father; but, still, here was a gleam of light in the terrible darkness--a spark from the heart of the son, who was not, after all, so entirely lost, into that of the father. "It was not mentioned in the note," said he. He had raised his head a little, and a feeble fire shone in his sad eyes; there was some look in him again of the iron soldier with whom Uncle Ernst had had that terrible passage-of-arms the other day.

"Not mentioned?" said Uncle Ernst; "but, good heavens----"

He broke off suddenly; his face darkened, and his voice sounded harsher, almost as it had done that morning, as he continued:

"Then in his brief note. Captain von Schönau probably did not mention the circumstance that Herr von Werben undertook the journey in question with my daughter!"

The General drew himself up at these words, like a man who was about sharply to resent an unexpected insult. The looks of the two men met; but while Uncle Ernst's eyes blazed more fiercely, the General's sought the ground, as, with a faint groan, he sank back in his chair.

"Miserable man!" he muttered to himself.

"You have to thank this circumstance--I mean the intervention of my daughter--that he is still alive," said Uncle Ernst.

"I can feel no gratitude for that," replied the General in a hollow voice.

"And that the father has not the son's death upon his head."

"The father would have been able to endure that responsibility."

"So I should suppose," muttered Uncle Ernst.

He sat for a few moments silent, and his looks also were now gloomy and downcast; but this was neither the time nor the place to renew the ancient feud. In a composed tone he said:

"If General von Werben did not know where Herr von Werben was gone, and that he was with my daughter, may I ask what brought him here?"

"I had intended to call to account the man whom I must suppose has brought ruin upon my son, as he has already brought ruin and shame upon my family. I confess that I hardly see any sense in this project now, and that I----"

The General made a movement as if to rise.

"Do not go, General," said Uncle Ernst. "If time had permitted, I would have gone to you and asked the favour of an interview; now that chance--if we may call it chance--has brought us together, let us make use of this half-hour; it may spare us perhaps years of vain remorse."

The General shot from under his bushy brows a dark, uncertain glance at the speaker.

"Yes, General," said Uncle Ernst, "I repeat it--remorse; though we have neither of us had much opportunity yet of making acquaintance with such a thing. I think we may both bear witness of ourselves, without boasting, that we have all our lives long desired to do right, according to the best of our knowledge and conscience; but, General, since that first and only interview which I had with you, the words have been constantly ringing in my ear, and I hear them at this moment more plainly than ever, that I have indeed forgotten nothing, but have also learned nothing. It was a hard saying to a man like myself, whose highest pride had been to have striven from his youth up after a better and purer experience, after truth and light; and I put it from me, therefore, as an absolute injustice. But it has returned upon me again and again, all through these dark and gloomy winter months, day after day, and night after night, and it has gnawed at my heart till I almost went mad over it, for I thought I could not believe those words without giving up myself, without denying the sun at midday, or at least admitting that that sun had dark, very dark spots, fearfully dark for one who would joyfully have laid his head upon the block for its spotless purity. And yet, General, it was so. However the tortured heart might cry out against it, the relentless words would not be silenced: 'You, who glory in having forgotten nothing, have lost the better part, and you have learned nothing.'

"This hard battle, General, in which I have nearly perished, and which has certainly shortened my life by many years, has continued till this very day, till this very hour. Even the shameless and disgraceful act of my son, with whom for years past I have lived in unnatural enmity, could not break my pride. 'What is it to me,' I cried, 'if he drew poison from the honey, if, when I had made respect for foolish prejudices ridiculous to the boy, he later on lost all reverence for the sacredness of law? If my teaching that it was every man's duty to stand upon his own feet and trust in his own strength was perverted by him into the doctrine that he who had the might had the right also to take all that his hand could grasp, and to tread under foot whatever was weak enough to allow itself to be trampled upon? He has been corrupt from his childhood,' I cried, 'let Nature be answerable for all that she has created in her dark recesses! What matters it to us who, out of the chaos where right and wrong, reason and folly, are wavering and mingling confusedly together, are striving after the light of absolute self-dependence? What matters it above all to the plebeian, to whom the aristocrat's pride in his forefathers seems ridiculous? Let the children go their way! Why should the question of whither we go seem to us more worthy of inquiry than of whence we come, concerning which on principle we ask nothing? Pale spectre of family honour, write thy Mene Tekel on the walls of the prince's palace, on the walls of the noble's house, but attempt not to awe the free man who has no honour and desires no honour, but that of remaining true to himself!'

"And then, General, as I thus strove with my God--I believe in a God, General von Werben, Radical and Republican as I am--there crossed my threshold an angel, if I may so call a being whose heavenly goodness and purity seem to have no trace of earth, my clerk's daughter, a blind girl, whom you have perhaps heard mentioned in your family circle. She came to tell me that my daughter had fled--fled with your son, to save him whom she loved with every fibre of her warm, passionate heart, to shield him from the death to which his own father, for what reason I knew not, had condemned him. But I had thrust the spectre from my door, I would not listen now to the angel's soft voice, although a strange awe, which I could not account for, thrilled through me. The meaning was not long unexplained. The pure, pitiful words had been the last which that noble being had drawn from the strength only of her immeasurable love; a few minutes later the purest heart which ever throbbed in human breast had ceased to beat."

Uncle Ernst pressed his hand to his eyes, and, suppressing his deep emotion by a powerful effort, continued:

"I cannot require of you, General, that you should share my feelings, and I will not waste the precious minutes in a detailed account of the steps which I have now taken, moved by a force which I have neither the power nor the wish further to withstand, in order to save what is perhaps not yet utterly lost. Suffice it to you to know that I have ascertained from the woman who has been your son's confidante lately, and also, without knowing it, the tool of that dangerous man who is such an arch-enemy of your family--I have ascertained, I believe, nearly all that I need know of the sad history which has been played beneath our eyes, unobserved by us.

"Suffice it to you that I am convinced, not of your son's innocence, it would be a lie were I to say that, and to-day more than ever we must have the courage to be sternly true to ourselves and to each other, but that he is not more guilty than a combination of unhappy circumstances may make a young man who, in spite of all his apparent knowledge of the world, is absolutely inexperienced, and whose heart, though no longer sinless, is not corrupt, but capable of noble impulses. And, General, if I have made to you, in whom I have always seen the impersonation of the principles most detested and abhorred by me, to you, above whom in my own self-righteousness I stood so high, a confession which has not been easy to my pride; if I have acknowledged that the principle of unbounded liberty and absolute self-dependence when carried to its extreme consequence may lead weaker spirits into error, must so lead them perhaps, as I see my two children erring now, one irrecoverably lost, the other only trembling on the edge of the abyss, into which some mere accident may precipitate her; have you, too, General von Werben, nothing to repent of, nothing to atone for? Have not the narrow fetters of aristocratic and military routine, in which you have tried to confine your son's easily-led disposition, been equally fatal to him? To him who in a freer and lighter atmosphere might have happily and naturally unfolded the bright gifts of his clear understanding, the powers of enjoyment of his warm heart, and who now, compressed and confined by prejudices on all sides, entangled in hopeless contradictions, has gradually accustomed himself to look upon life so completely and entirely as a series of necessary and unavoidable contradictions, that his death at this moment would be only one more?

"A terrible and monstrous contradiction. For would it not be one? Death by his own hand, at the moment when that hand is seized by the woman whom this self-condemned suicide--from all that I now hear I am certain of this--loves with all the force of which his heart is capable, and certainly far more than his own life; and this woman, who is not unworthy indeed of such love, says to him in tones which can only come from a loving and despairing heart: 'Live, live! Live for me, to whom you are all! I have left father, and house, and home, to live for you! With you, without hoping for better days! With you, in shame and misery, if need be--with you!'"

Uncle Ernst ceased, overpowered by the feelings of his noble, strong heart, choked by the thoughts which surged in his powerfully working mind. The General, who had been sitting in gloomy meditation, raised his sorrow-dimmed eyes.

"If need be?--it must be!"

"Must be?" cried Uncle Ernst; "why? Because to the poor weary wayworn wanderers it seems that the farther road for them can only be toiling through the desert, through thorns and over stony ground? For them! Good heavens! They who are young and strong, who will soon in the palmy Eden of their love recognise their youth and strength, and with renewed courage and refreshed hearts go out into life, which stretches boundless and beautiful before them! Life, in whose immeasurable space there is a thousand-fold room for the man who has erred, if he has but courage and can rise firmly to his feet again to resume the battle, and to conquer in a new sphere of work, a home for himself, for the woman he loves--for his children! The children, General, with whom a new world is born which knows nothing of the old, which needs to know and should know nothing of the father's sin; that sin which, if the father indeed has not atoned for by his sorrow, by his penance, by a single noble deed, they may redeem by the simple fact of living, of being new blossoms on the tree of humanity, at the foot of which we old people with our ancient griefs and troubles shall long have gone to rest."

Uncle Ernst's great eyes were glowing with noble enthusiasm; but the General's troubled face gave not the faintest response to it. He slowly shook his grey head.

"I must ask you one question, which sounds very cruel, but is not meant to be so, only to bring us down from this region of bright and, to my thinking, fantastic dreams to this dark earth. Does the perspective which you open to my son, extend also to your son?"

Uncle Ernst started, the fire of his glance was dimmed, and some moments elapsed before his answer came.

"The cases are as far apart as heaven is from earth, as far as a thoughtless act intended to injure no one, which he who committed it hoped, I know, to make good, and to which he had been after all led away by fiendish suggestions, differs from a proceeding which was carried out with the most cold-blooded calculation, in the full knowledge of the ruinous consequences to thousands of others."

"And for which meanwhile there can be no atonement in your eyes!"

Uncle Ernst moved restlessly, impatiently in his chair.

"What do you mean, General?"

"Only to remind you, that turn ourselves which way we will, we must always judge life from our own point of view, and we can only measure men's actions by the rule which birth, education, intellect and reflection have given to us. Or do you think that the stockjobber, the speculator, the reckless adventurer, would in their hearts, if such men have hearts, condemn your son as the man of honour, the honest manufacturer does, although he is his father? And can you blame an honourable soldier because he condemns and brands the dishonourable conduct of another soldier, although that soldier is his son, or rather because he is his son? Can you suppose that I would deny my son, whom I have loved as well as any father ever loved his son, whom even at this moment I love with a love that rends my heart----"

The General's voice shook, and he drew a long breath, almost a groan, that echoed shudderingly in the silent room.

"Can you suppose that I would deny him the life which you describe, if I did not believe it to be impossible? It may be that the narrow bonds, of which you spoke just now, have so cramped my mental horizon that they have for ever checked the free flight of thought. But these conditions of thought and feeling exist for the whole class, and must so exist if it is not to be swept away; and so they exist also for my son. Never, under any circumstances can he forget that he has cast a stain upon the shield of his forefathers, that he has himself broken the sword which he received from his commander-in-chief, that he has disgraced his arms, that he could not look one of his old comrades in the face even if they met in a desert, that he must carefully seek the society of obscure men whom he would formerly as carefully have avoided, he who once might stand freely and boldly before his king, whom his king----"

And again the General drew a long, deep breath.

Uncle Ernst's lips were twitching. Here again there rose before him the barrier which pride and arrogance had drawn straight across life's bloom; the barrier which in his stormy youthful days he had thought to conquer by one effort, and which he had afterwards tried through long weary years to carry off stone by stone! And not one stone was missing after all; it stood straight and strong, unapproachable and invincible as ever! And he stood powerless on this side, and on the other side was his child who must be lost now because pride and arrogance would have it so. No, it should never be!

He sprang up.

"Then I must set to work alone."

"What was your plan?"

The General had risen also, but the mere movement seemed difficult to the man who used to be so alert and active.

"Roughly this," answered Uncle Ernst; "not to allow my child to go out unreconciled to me into a life whose varied changes no man can reckon upon, and whose otherwise too hard path I desired as far as possible to smooth by my advice and help. I gathered from the woman of whom I spoke that in the first hurried agitation of his distracted thoughts, even before his father's message arrived, your son had intended to hasten to Warnow, to force an explanation from the traitor in the presence of his aunt the Baroness, who according to this scoundrel's declaration had taken upon herself the material responsibility, so to speak, of these unhappy bills, at least had promised under all circumstances to make good the deficiency. Herr von Schönau even, after many objections, had agreed to this. When, therefore, the unhappy man wished to kill himself, in spite of the presence of his friend, who felt his own powerlessness and yet could advise my daughter to return home, as flight with her at this moment would make it absolutely impossible for him to intervene further on behalf of his brother-officer, when it became the first consideration for her who wished to save her lover at any cost, even that of the pitying contempt of his best friend, to escape from the influence of this very cautious friendship, no matter whither; then the adroit confidante brought forward again the idea of Warnow, merely, I believe, because the train for Sundin was the first to start. I, for my part, hoped and still hope to overtake them in Sundin, to be able to tell your son that there is no object in the continuation of his journey, as I claim for myself the right of paying the debts of the man who has eloped with my daughter, and who will therefore also marry her. Should they have gone on to Warnow I shall of course follow them there, or anywhere else until I overtake them. At Warnow too I promise myself the assistance of my nephew. He possesses and deserves my daughter's highest respect, and I am convinced that he would add to the father's blessing the good wishes of a friend who, in turning the pages of the book of honour, does not omit the chapters which treat of humanity."

The patience of the passionate spirit was exhausted; in the last words might be traced even suppressed wrath. He buttoned his overcoat and took up his hat, which stood on the table by the General's little box, as the man who had before offered his services to the General entered the room from the platform with the stationmaster. The stationmaster went up to Uncle Ernst to inform him that the train was ready, while the other handed a telegram to the General.

"I happened to be in the office," said he, "when it arrived, through Stettin, having been handed in early this morning at Prora. I think the contents are of importance."

The General took the paper, which in the hurry had not even been folded: