While thus speaking she had let fall the plaid in which I had wrapped her and had risen from the chair, and with her last words she sank upon her knees, holding out her arms to me. The flickering light of the fire played upon her fantastic gypsy dress, gleamed upon her dark hair which hung in dishevelled locks over her cheeks and shoulders, and glowed upon the face which had so fatal a beauty for me. The nameless charm with which she had at first fascinated me overcame me with all the old might: my heart beat as if it would burst from my bosom, and feverish shudders ran over my whole body, but with a vehement effort I collected myself, stretched out my ice-cold hand and raised her, and said:

"You apply to the wrong person. Entrust your vengeance upon the prince to one who has a nearer interest in it: to the young man, for instance, upon whose arm you were leaning when I saw you in the gallery, and who, this very evening, if I am not mistaken, was the personage in the play whom Preciosa made happy with her favor."

Constance had risen slowly, her eyes ever fixed upon mine, and began to pace the room with hasty steps, pausing at intervals before me, and speaking as she walked:

"How base you men are; how horribly base and unfeeling! Was it for this reason--to heap these cruel reproaches upon me--that you enticed me here? Is this your hospitality? Do you think your fire has warmed me too much, that you now drench me with ice-water? But your heart is so cold only because your brain is so dull; because, for instance, you cannot comprehend how a woman who, from childhood up, has been lapped in visions of future splendor, and has seen her life's dream almost realized, when this dream at once scatters like light mist, and she, with her high-wrought feelings and pampered taste, with her cherished pretensions to beauty and luxury, is about to be given over to a coa.r.s.e, commonplace existence--that such a woman of necessity must catch at the wretched reflection of the brilliant reality that is irrecoverably gone; that the beloved of princes can afterwards be nothing else than a stage princess. And not even this pitiful reflection does he leave me undisturbed! Again he forces himself upon me, and embitters my poor triumph. But why do I speak of all this to a man who understands it not, and can never understand it--who has chosen the happy lot of a modest existence full of labor, and toil, and quiet sleep?"

I had thrown myself into the chair from which she had arisen, and she stood before me, and went on in a strange, soft, trembling voice:

"If I could only sleep! If I could only sleep! Could I but drink from the fountain that daily flows for you, and will flow for that happy woman whom some day you will bring to this peaceful hearth! Could I banish the fever that here burns me, and here allows me no rest"--she pointed with these words to her breast and her head--"no rest--none! Oh to sleep thus, amid the perfumes of rosemary and violets--a sweet sleep upon a strong, true heart!"

And as I sat with bowed head, and heart filled with pain, I felt a pair of soft arms wind about my neck, a swelling bosom pressed to mine, and a pair of glowing lips that sought my own. Had the dream which the enamored, pa.s.sionate boy had dreamed become reality, or was I really dreaming? And was it only as one who strives to arouse himself from a dream that I pressed her to me, then sprang to my feet and let her glide from my arms, and again caught her to my heart?

The light which had been burning dimly now sank into the socket and expired, but in the flickering glimmer of the fire I saw the outlines of the lovely form that clung and pressed down to my breast, and as if in a dream I heard a voice murmur at my ear: "to sleep sweetly upon a strong, true heart!"

CHAPTER VII.

"Are you sick, my dear George?" said Doctor Snellius, entering my room one evening.

I had not seen the doctor since we last parted so unpleasantly, and the visit of the man with the keen spectacles and the keen eyes behind them was doubly disagreeable to one who wished to avoid the gaze of every one. He must have noticed my embarra.s.sment, for the tone of his voice was unusually soft and gentle when he spoke again, after taking his place by the fire.

"I knew it from Klaus Pinnow, who perceived that something was amiss with you, and from Paula, who has perceived nothing because you have not been near her, and who sends me to you for this reason. What is it, my friend? Your hand is hot, you look wretchedly, and you have decided fever. What is amiss?"

"I feel quite well," I answered--drawing my large hand out of the doctor's, which was small and delicate as a woman's, and with it screening my brow and eyes from the sharp spectacles--"perfectly well."

"You must then have some mental trouble, some great distress, which affects natures like yours more powerfully than severe sickness does others. Is it so?"

"You may be right there," I answered.

"And can you not tell me what it is?" asked the doctor, drawing nearer to me, and laying his small hand upon my other hand which rested on my knee.

"It is not worth talking about," I answered. "A curious story--something like one which I have read somewhere or other--about a young man who loved a beautiful woman who was a witch, and one night as he stretched out his hand to take hers she had vanished--out of the chimney--to the Blocksberg--to the devil, I suppose!"

And I sprang up, paced the room for a few minutes in great agitation, and then threw myself again into my chair.

"The story is rather too mystical to build a diagnosis upon," the doctor remarked, in a kind voice, drawing still nearer, and, as he could not take my hand, laying his own familiarly upon my knee.

"Then listen to this: A youth of nineteen loved a beautiful girl of about the same age--loved her pa.s.sionately, as one loves at those years, especially, when solitude and romantic a.s.sociations heighten the charm. He was deceived by the girl, and finally shamefully betrayed; and yet he never could forget her, and in the eight or nine years that follows his heart palpitated in his breast whenever he thought of her.

And then an accident brought her to him again--just as he had expected to find her--a lost girl, who had been the mistress of I know not how many men. He cannot doubt it--indeed she tells him so herself--and yet while she tells him his heart throbs violently, and in his soul he longs to join the long train of his predecessors. And when she opens her arms he hastened to sink upon her breast in which there beats no heart. He plainly feels that no heart beats there; but a childish, an insane pity seizes him: he will warm this chilled heart again with the glow of his burning kisses, with his own heart's blood. And the phantom drinks his heart's blood--one, two, three nights; and when he wakes in the third, she has vanished as witches vanish, and the next night he sees her at the theatre coquetting with a young dandy, who drives home with her, while outside----"

"Stands the poor man, and beats his head with his fist, and tears out his hair by handfuls; we know all about that!" said Doctor Snellius, and softly patted my knee. "We know all about that," he repeated, touching me still more softly; "it is painful; but when a jaw-tooth with three long roots is pulled out, that is painful too, and so is the setting a broken arm. And I think the poor man whom I have just left is not in a frame of mind to be envied. It is a poor workman in your establishment; you doubtless know him; his name is Jacob Kraft, and he works, if I am not mistaken, in your shop. Well, his wife, a dear good woman, whom the young fellow had courted for many a long day, nine days ago bore a dead child, and now she lies dead herself, and by her bedside kneels poor Jacob and wishes that he had never been born. I do not think the poor fellow's feelings are to be envied. And young Frau Muller is not particularly happy either. Her husband left home this morning, well and cheerful, to go to his work on the new tramway, had his breast crushed in between two wagons, and will die to-night.

Besides, my friend, we must all die, and 'after nine it will all be over,' as the manager of the theatre said when the pit hissed."

"Dying is not so much," I said; "I have more than once in my life wished to die, and thought it rather a greater thing that I did not, but kept on living this cursed life."

"And you did right, my friend," said the doctor.

"I am not sure," I replied, "if those Romans of whom I heard at school did not act both n.o.bler and wiselier when they fell upon their swords so soon as the game was lost."

"Every one to his taste," said the doctor. "When a horse breaks his leg we shoot him; but with a man, we set it again; or, if it cannot be saved, cut it off and buckle on a leg of wood or cork, with which he hobbles on the remainder of his earthly pilgrimage. You have no idea, my friend, how little is really necessary to life: hardly more than head and heart. Yes, scarcely even that. You have, no doubt, yourself observed how many a man goes through life without a head; and that one can live with half a heart, or a quarter, I can testify from personal experience."

The doctor said this in a low, dejected tone of voice, as if talking to himself And he went on still, as if talking to himself, softly stroking my knee, and looking into the fire.

"Yes! with half a heart. It is not very easy or very pleasant living; one sometimes feels as if the breast would be crushed, or as if we must lie down just where we happen to be, and never rise up again. But we do get up again, and do some good, if not to ourselves to another whose shoe pinches him somewhere, and whom with our experience and our cobbler's skill we may possibly help. For, my friend, there are very few who are able to pull off their shoes, which in truth is not merely the best but the only way to be rid of all pain. So these people must be helped; and my life for many years has been but a pondering and study how this may be done on a large scale; for in a smaller sphere, as far as very limited private means can reach, I very well know what is to be done, and do all I can. _Au revoir_, my dear George: I still have a pair of old shoes to patch and a corn or two to trim."

Doctor Snellius gave me a friendly slap on the knee, clapped his worn hat on his bald head, turned in the door to give me an amicable nod, and left me alone.

A man not naturally ign.o.ble is perhaps never more disposed or better fitted to sympathize in other's misfortunes than when he himself has a heavy sorrow. Thus the horrible treachery which Constance had practiced upon me opened my eyes and my heart to the doctor's trouble. That the singular man loved Paula I had never doubted; but as he always draped his love in a humorous cloak, I, in my simplicity, had never seen how strong and deep this love was. It seemed to me so evident that this dwarfish figure, with the misshapen bald head and the grotesquely ugly face, could never be loved by a beautiful slender maiden, as one looks upon it as a matter of course that a man who goes on crutches cannot dance upon the tight-rope. Now for the first time I saw what this man must have suffered through all these years--the man who, not without reason, and a.s.suredly not without a reference to himself, said that a man to live scarcely required more than a head and a heart. And then I compared him, the stoical sufferer, with myself, and asked myself if he, the pure, the good, the n.o.ble, did not better deserve Paula's love than I, for this good fortune had always seemed to me a kind of miracle, of which I had ever felt myself unworthy, but never so unworthy as now.

Perhaps more than one youth of eighteen, who may read these lines, will smile compa.s.sionately, in the consciousness of his maturer experience, at the man of twenty-eight, who took such a trifle so deeply to heart.

But he should consider that I had grown up among the simplest a.s.sociations, had been eight years in prison, and now since I had lived in the city had employed all my time in carrying out my determination to be a good machinist. How could I have acc.u.mulated the experience of my wise censor? How could I know that love-troubles of this kind are to a man of the world what scars are to a brigand--not only honorable in his own eyes and those of his companions, but also in the eyes of the fair whose grace and favor he counts upon winning? I was but a great boy with all my twenty-eight years; I confess it with contrition, and beg my wise friend of eighteen to have patience with me.

Perhaps he will find this a difficult task, when he learns that I carried my folly so far as to feel convinced that I had given myself to the fair sinner, body and soul, forever, and that it was my duty henceforth to live for her; to save her if I could, to perish with her if I must; and that I felt myself nowise released from this obligation and free once more, when she wrote me a delicate little perfumed billet, saying that I was still as ever her good George, whom she loved dearly, but that she could not live with me, and had no wish to be saved by me, far less to perish with me.

But in my own eyes I was and remained a condemned criminal, severed from the companionship of the good and pure. Never for me should the flame glow on the domestic hearth, never a pure woman make me happy with her hand, never laughing children play around my knees. The curse with which unkind Nature had smitten the good doctor--the curse of never being loved as his heart yearned to be--I had in my folly invoked upon myself; and thus nothing remained for me but, like him, to renounce individual love, and, like him, to draw comfort and solace from the overflowing fountain of love for suffering humanity.

I was able to see, later, that the doctor, as wise as he was skilful, judged pretty accurately of my condition, and took a far less tragical view of it than I did. But the state of my thoughts and feelings at the moment fitted very well with his purposes. For years he had looked upon me as his pupil, and he might do so in more than one light. He had a great scheme in view in which he counted on his pupil's a.s.sistance, and this, in his opinion, was one step necessary to success.

I had always known that the worthy man, although he constantly maintained that while it was true that stupidity was a misfortune, it was none the less true that misfortune was in most cases mere stupidity--cherished a great love for the unfortunate stupids and the stupid unfortunates. How great this love was, I was now to know. He made me theoretically and practically acquainted with those social questions with which the whole world is now occupied, but then were only seen in their full importance by a few enlightened minds. He showed me the state of things in England, in France, and at home, and what might also be done in Germany upon the pattern of what had been done in England and France. Then he spoke of benefit-societies, of co-operative a.s.sociations, and workmen's unions, of play-schools for children and trade-schools for adults, and all the means that have been devised to fight the universal enemy upon his own ground. At this time there had been next to nothing of this sort done among us: which was all the more unfortunate, as just at this time, with the springing up of the first railroads, manufactures received a quite unlooked-for expansion, the increased demand for labor brought an enormous influx of workmen, and with this an enormous increase of those evils which even under the old patriarchal relations it had not been possible entirely to prevent.

In my frame of mind at the time I was soon brought to enter into his views with pa.s.sionate ardor. An ordinary workman, as I was, in brotherly intercourse with my fellow-workmen, I heard and saw everything that went on among them. Where my knowledge was at fault, Klaus, from his fuller experience, could supply the defect, and further than either reached the keen vision of the doctor, who saw into the darkest recesses which poverty and misery hide from the eyes of all but the physician. So we three interchanged experiences, and many an evening, after the heavy work of the day, sat around the doctor's table in consultation over the projects which the doctor had so long been nursing.

Alas! it was little, very little that we could do. On the one side, we had to contend with the stupidity of those who would rather go to ruin than abandon their old routine; and on the other side, with the dull selfishness of those who could not see why they might not prosper, even if the others were ruined.

"It is the old story of Hammer and Anvil," I said one evening to my two friends. "The workmen have so accustomed themselves to the dull pa.s.sive part of the anvil that they can set nothing in motion, even when their own interest manifestly requires it. The manufacturers, on the other hand, think that as they are now the gentlemen of the hammer, they have only to pound away upon the anvil which, heaven be thanked, has remained patient so far."

"Have I not always told you that it has been so as long as the world has stood?" replied the doctor. "Now you see it for yourself."

"But there must be some remedy discoverable!" I cried. "I cannot let go the precious faith of our beloved friend."

"Not in the way in which he sought it," returned the doctor, shaking his big head. "He imagined that he could make men free by teaching them the dignity and sanct.i.ty of labor. 'They were not willing to work when they should have been; now they must whether they will or not; and my task is to bring them to _will_ that which they _must_. They were not free when they were at liberty; I would make them truly free while they are in captivity, that from bondage they may come forth as free men'--such speeches as these, how often have we heard from his lips?

And he firmly believed it all, n.o.ble enthusiast that he was, because he did not know the world, did not know that labor is a commodity in the market of the world, which, like every other, is subject to the great laws of supply and demand; and that these may stand so adjusted that the free diligent workman may find himself in a pa.s.s where neither his freedom, his diligence, nor his work is worth a farthing. So the cause of Anvil _versus_ Hammer is appealed to a higher court, where it will be decided according to the great laws of history and political economy, with a verdict--as our friend had correctly discovered--, that both parties were guilty and liable for the costs of the suit."

"That may quiet our anxiety as to the final result," I said; "but if I rightly understood our friend, the better man might in himself compose this difference, as he is conscious that at every moment he at once acts and suffers, gives and receives, bears and is borne--in a word, is both Hammer and Anvil."

"Very fine and honorable for him who so penetrates himself with this truth that it influences all his actions," replied the doctor. "But the common good is less dependent upon this than it seems; and lucky that it is so, for so soon as the individual has power, for instance riches, he is seized with a d.a.m.nable itching to abuse it. What then is to become of poor humanity?"

"And yet you abused me that I did not clutch with both hands at your offer to intrust all your fortune to me, which I should have cheated you out of forthwith, as a good start on my way to a million."

"That is a very different matter," said the doctor, in some confusion.

"I do not see why," I answered. "What security have you that I can resist temptation better than another? Or do I, with my broad shoulders, look as if I would go through the needle's eye easier than our worthy commerzienrath?"

"Do not compare yourself with that monster," cried the doctor in a rage. "Did I never show you the letter in which he answered my request that he would take an interest in our projects? Here, you can skip that part--a coa.r.s.e joke about people who count their chickens before they are hatched---but here: 'Co-operative a.s.sociations? Stuff and nonsense!