"I am extremely obliged to you," replied Bertram. "However, surely what a man is born for is wont to announce itself, sooner or later, in a man's own heart. With me that voice is absolutely silent; and, therefore, I might surely claim the right of refusing to give the evidence required of me. But not being specially qualified, and being absolutely impartial, I would fain warn my friends not to repose overmuch confidence in poets on that particular point. Anxious for the applause of the many, as their trade seems to demand, they accommodate themselves but too readily to the taste of the many, who, as we all know, like very children, seize eagerly upon anything bright, glistening, motley-coloured. Therefore, why should they not picture the heroine as beautiful beyond compare, the hero as valorous beyond comparison, and heap any number of additional t.i.tles to fame upon their blessed heads! Whether one quality does not perchance exclude another, whether the measure dealt out does not, anyhow, exceed all that is reasonably possible--dear, dear, there are few who'll ask that question; and if any one does, why, then, he is a pedant, and for pedants the heroes of romance have no existence, any more than real heroes have for their valets."

"Oh! you scoffer--you wretch!" exclaimed Lydia. "Why, you will prove next that beauty, that valour, that every virtue in the world, belongs to the region of romance. What a terrible thing scepticism is! But our friend was ever thus. Did I not say a short while ago: Hildegard, I cannot believe that he has changed; he cannot change! And behold, he is exactly what he always was!"

"Well, that's coming it pretty strong, seeing it's twenty years since ..."

The corpulent host had laughingly given utterance to these words, then, feeling his wife's dark eyes bent upon him in stern disapproval, he broke off abruptly with Ahem! poured some wine into his own gla.s.s, which was but half emptied, and then wanted to know why the gentlemen present were not doing justice to the wine that night.

Bertram, wishing to relieve his friends in their evident embarra.s.sment, came to the rescue, saying, with smiling, easy politeness: "Fraulein von Aschhof only proves by her kind a.s.sertion of my immutability, that she is indeed looking upon the world and mankind with a poetical eye.

But let us remember this--the poets themselves allow only the fair s.e.x to partic.i.p.ate in the pleasing prerogative of the calmly careless ever youthful G.o.ds; and the poets may venture on this deception, because the listener is willing to be deceived. 'Breathes there a man with soul so dead,' who ever ventured to count up the years of an Antigone, an Iphigenia, a Helena? They are what they were--else they are not. But, even the poet's flattering arts cannot keep the man from aging; and if the poet would grant perennial youth to a man, he must needs let him die in his youth--like Achilles."

"I protest against this theory," Lydia exclaimed eagerly. "I a.s.sert that heroes age as little as heroines."

"Even that," Bertram replied with a smile, "would not help me, seeing that I am no hero, a.s.suming even that you were right. But I may be permitted to indulge in some humble doubt. At best the hero of the Odyssey appears distinctly as a man of mature age,--to put it mildly,--and Pallas Athene must practise upon him her divine art of beautifying before she ventures to introduce him among the Phaeaci."

The Baron was meanwhile playing with his spoons and forks again; he was evidently annoyed at having been so long kept out of the conversation.

Bertram went on as though he did not notice it at all; he very surely was not speaking for that fellow's sake. He only cared to clear himself in Erna's eyes from any suspicion that he, like the aged coquette opposite him, was laying claim to a juvenility which had gone by for ever; and seeing those eyes steadily bent upon him, he took heart of grace, and went on in the same tone of easy, good-humoured banter--

"Goethe, a modern, and in this case a tragic, poet too, in his Nausicaan fragments, wisely forebore to bring in that art of beautifying, which is only lawful for the epic poet in his antique navety, and in order to bridge over the mighty difference and distance of years, and to change the evidently improbable into something at least credible, he takes refuge in illusion, causing it to arise from the child's very heart, like a fog enveloping those pure eyes, that clear mind--

'That man must ever be a youthful man, Who is well-pleasing to a maiden's eyes.'[1]

Thus the aged nurse, taking the unspoken words, as it were, from Nausicaa's chaste lips. A touching saying, touching, like children's belief in the omnipotence of their parents! And about that youthfulness, which exists nowhere except in the glorious dreams of a young, inexperienced, generous soul, well, Gothe has told us something with exquisite humour, not, as true humour indeed never is, without a touch of melancholy, in the novelette of the man of fifty. Poor old Major! I have always been heartily sorry for him. Remember how he begs the services of the valet (skilled in the use of cosmetics) from his friend the great actor; how that adroit official uses his balm, and his stays, and his wadding for the aged gentleman, and yet cannot save the diseased front tooth, and certainly cannot keep fair Hilarie from falling vehemently in love with young Flavio, solely because she sees him in raptures with the clever widow, solely because in Flavio's raptures she beholds for the first time a representation of genuine, ardent, youthful pa.s.sion. All this is as true as it is charming, as charming as it is melancholy, at least for the reader who is in a position to test the hero's experiences and sentiments by his own sentiments and experiences."

"Of course; 'there's no fool like an old fool,' and I suppose that really is the final outcome of the whole business," said the Baron.

"How dare you talk of things you know nothing about, you prosaic individual?" exclaimed Lydia, bringing her fan down upon the giant's arm. "There is no talk of old people here. A man of fifty is not old, he is in the prime of life, and is often ten times younger than your used-up so-called young gentlemen. But I must really say something for Gothe against our 'learned friend.' Yes, yes, my friend, I know the novelette well; I read it aloud to the Court barely a week ago. Who bids you take a comedy in that tragic way?--for the novelette in question is a comedy--a 'Comedy of Errors.' Hilarie fancies she is in love with the uncle, and really loves Flavio; Flavio fancies himself in love with the young widow, whilst really he loves Hilarie; and how the Major--well, I think the final scene at the inn proves emphatically that he had only turned his feelings to--to--to--the wrong address, if I may venture upon the expression; and that he and the clever widow subsequently became a happy pair is perfectly clear to me. Or, do you think not?"

A warning glance flashed from Hildegard's dark eyes. Lydia positively blushed through her layers of paint. She had shown her hand too plainly!

Bertram struggled successfully against a strong inclination to smile; nay, curiously enough, something like pity for her indiscretion stirred within him. He went on--

"To be sure, you are right, right, above all, in calling the novelette a comedy. How little Gothe cared to have a tragic conflict is evident from the fact that he chose circ.u.mstances as favourable as possible for a happy conclusion, and that he from the very beginning secured a line of retreat for every one concerned. The Major is the uncle of Hilarie, the only daughter of his widowed mother, and he has doubtless acted the part of father to her--has, up till now, loved her as his own child.

His rival, in whose favour he resigns his claims, is his own only son, to whom he is also very much attached, and with whom he is on excellent terms, whom he in fact treats like a comrade. Again, behind Hilarie, as she vanishes from him, stands as it were the young widow; and in her arms the Major will speedily forget the small humiliation. And lastly, and this seems to me to be the chief point, Goethe has wisely avoided to introduce the one element whereby he would have been enabled, nay compelled, to turn the comedy into tragedy; he has ... but I beg pardon of our fair hostess for being so garrulous. To be sure, it is high time we rose from table!"

Truly enough, the turn which the conversation had taken had, for Erna's sake, been unwelcome to her mother. So she seized the opportunity and rose from table. Erna, who had sat without turning her gaze from Bertram, took a deep breath, like some one who is being recalled from deep dreams to the consciousness of present realities, and followed the example of the others. She and Bertram were the last couple that left the dining-room on their return to the garden-saloon, which had meanwhile been lighted up, and Bertram thought she was walking very slowly--on purpose.

"What was the one element, Uncle Bertram?" she asked.

"What one element?"

He knew what she meant; but he had broken off at table, because he himself dreaded the utterance of the word. So he delayed his reply, and just then his host appeared, bringing cigars: the gentlemen might smoke on the verandah, whilst Lydia would give them some music.

"You remember, Charles, do you not," he went on, "the _sonata pathetique_--that used to be your favourite piece? And Lydia has practised it often since, I think."

Lydia was ready. Bertram, however, begged to be excused from remaining.

He felt, he said, after all, tired with the day's journey, and it was but the charm of their company which had made him forget that he was still a convalescent. He barely gave Hildegard time to draw him aside, and to say to him in a whisper--

"You really are most amiable. How good of you to take it so kindly. I had not at dinner to-day courage enough to make my confession. Indeed I have to confess, to say much to you--to-morrow ..."

"To-morrow be it, fair friend," said Bertram, kissing the lady's hand, bowing to the rest, and making hastily for the door. He had not reached it before Erna was by his side.

"You used to say good-night to me less formally."

He did not venture to press a kiss on the proffered brow, but only took her hand.

The great grave eyes gazed at him as though they would fain read what was pa.s.sing in his inmost soul.

"Good-night, dear child," he said hurriedly.

"Good-night," she replied slowly, letting his hot, trembling hand glide out of her own cool little one.

"It is lucky," said Bertram to himself, after he had dismissed Konski, and as he stood alone by the open window in his bedroom, "it is very lucky, indeed, that it is not very easy to read what is pa.s.sing in somebody else's soul. She would have found queer reading!"

He leaned out of the window and gazed into the darkness. Not a breath of air. From the garden below the fragrance of mignonette was wafted up; the brook murmured aloud; a thin white veil was spread over the valley, with here and there a dim speck of light. The sky was cloudless, of deep blue, almost black colour; the moon looked like a ma.s.s of gold, and one solitary star near it shone forth in red splendour.

Bertram recalled just such a night, long years ago, when a friend, the a.s.sistant-astronomer, had given Erna's father and himself the opportunity of witnessing, from the Bonn Observatory, the transit of that same star--Aldebaran--through the moon! Afterwards he had accompanied Otto back to Poppelsdorf, and Otto had in his turn walked back with him to the Pfortchen in Bonn; and so backward and forward, all through the mild summer's night, until the light of morning had come, and the birds were beginning to twitter in the leafy crowns of the chestnut trees. And they had been raving of friendship and love--of the love they both, most fraternally, cherished for one and the same black-eyed beauty, the daughter of one of their professors, and they had both been sublimely happy, all their misery notwithstanding, for the black-eyed one was known to love another--"Great Heaven, how long, how long ago? A generation, and more. And now ...?"

"Now," he went on, "you are about to fall in love with the daughter of the same man whom then you rivalled in absurdly exaggerated, donkey-like phantasies--with a girl of eighteen, whose father you could be. And this time you would not get off with raving incoherently for a night of two, and with scribbling a few mediocre sonnets! Be reasonable, old man. Let it go--let it go! You know full well you can have no abiding place here, any more than the horseman in the Piccolomini. Behind you, too, as you ride along, crouches the lean companion and clasps you in his bony arms, and every now and again taps at your heart, to test if it is still stupid enough to throb for a beauteous maiden who is seated by the window among wallflowers and rosemary.

"And behind the curtain stands her lover, and bends across her, that he, too, may look upon the mad horseman, who is stretching out his neck to see his darling. And the clumsy fellow with the bull's neck wrinkles his silly brow, twirls his mustachio, strokes his beard, mutters _Mort de ma vie!_ and shakes his coa.r.s.e fist. But she pouts, and giggles and bursts out laughing, and falls on the neck of the jealous one ...

"No, no; it cannot be! You only want to hear from her lips that it cannot be. And then--away, away--ride out of the gate--to swift, honourable death. And G.o.d's blessing on thee, thou gentle, lovely, and beloved child!"

He closed the window gently, and so to bed; to bed, but not to sleep.

He could not find that repose he stood so much in need of. The brook murmured so loudly, or was it the hot b.l.o.o.d.y surging to his temples?

And was he about to sink into slumber, he would start up again immediately; he seemed again, to be holding her by the hand, and she bent her forehead to be kissed by him.

"No--no! Lead me not into temptation! Do not ask me what the one thing is! I would not say it, even, if--what G.o.d forbid!--it were so. I will not let you beguile me into a tragedy, any more than from one comedy into another."

VI.

This thought, which had at length quieted Bertram's, wildly tumultuous spirits, was also his first, when late next morning he awoke from deep and dreamless slumbers--neither tragedy nor comedy! Calm and clear observation, as best becomes a solitary individual who has done with life; who neither hopes nor fears anything from Fate for himself; maintaining a benevolent interest in the fate of others, where benevolence is merited and interest is justified; cherishing throughout the conviction that, after all, every one makes or mars his own life; that interference and advice are rarely of much use, and generally distinctly hurtful; and that, even under the most favourable circ.u.mstances, the task of mediator is ever, of all tasks, the most thankless.

In the clear light of these contemplations and of the delicious morning which was resting in sunny radiance above the lovely landscape, last night's scenes appeared to Bertram like the confused darkness of a feverish dream; nay, he derived some comfort from the thought that he probably had been ill, and was therefore only partly responsible for his extraordinary demeanour. Still, he was gravely responsible for one thing--he ought sooner to have become conscious of his condition. He might well thank his stars that in his excited state he had not behaved even more strangely; above all, that to-day, for the first time since his last long and severe illness, he felt as fresh and strong as in his best days. a.s.suredly with the morning all things seemed to have become better--much better than he could have expected--than he deserved!

The master's disposition was singularly serene, and he gave it a most friendly expression in the course of his toilet, showing himself ready for a friendly gossip with Konski; but Konski, strange, to say, was out of temper, and refused to be gossiped with.

At last Bertram said: "What ails you? If you are displeased, at what I said yesterday about our speedy departure, you may calm yourself. We still remain here for the whole time we had originally arranged. I see you have unpacked already."

"We may leave to-day, for aught I care!" grumbled Konski.