Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

CHAPTER XXIII.

But I scarcely had quitted my house when I reflected that after what had happened, it was scarcely possible that the prince could still be in the theatre, and I turned my steps towards his palace. It was about nine o'clock; the evening was cold and raw, though we were at the beginning of March; the snow was blowing about in the wind and eddying around corners; pedestrians were hurrying along with pulled-up collars and bent heads; and I could not help remembering the evening a year before, when I saw the unhappy girl in the yellow light of the lamps at the door of the palace, which I now reached all out of breath. For the revenge which had then blazed in her dark eyes and breathed from her mouth, the revenge to which she had in vain endeavored to entice me, for this sweet, this terrible revenge she had found the right man at last.

I was possessed with the feeling that all this had to come so; that a destiny long-appointed, which neither I nor any one could baffle, had now reached its accomplishment. I asked myself--What brings me here? What do I mean to do? I could find no answer to this question; not even when I stood in the ante-chamber and besought the old servant, who had been called, to lead me at once to his master.

"I can admit no one," the old man replied.

He seemed greatly agitated, his voice trembled as he spoke, and his withered hand, which he raised as if to keep me off, trembled visibly.

At this moment the door leading to the room in which the prince had received me in the afternoon opened, and Count Schlachtensee came out and passed us with the same fixed look I had observed on him in the theatre. Evidently it was not pretence; he really did not see me. So what I had feared, was now rushing down. I could not restrain myself longer, and regardless of the old servant, rushed through the door through which the count had come, traversed a second large ante-chamber towards the inner room, through the open door of which I saw the prince sitting at a writing table.

"This to Herr Hartwig at once!" he said, holding out to me a letter in his left hand, while he leaned his head on his right.

"I am he," I said, taking the letter, and holding his hand firmly in mine.

His hand was cold, and the face which he now turned to me was pale as death; only on the right cheek glowed a crimson spot, as if branded there.

"You here?" he asked, in surprise. "That is very well; now I can tell you what is in the letter, which I will ask you to take care of. It is a written memorandum of our agreement to-day, with the addition of a request to the prince, my father, to carry out this agreement, whatever happens."

I still held his hand, and endeavored in vain to speak a word. If I had needed any explanation of the irresistible sympathy with which this man inspired me, I had it now in my very hands. And this man must be the sacrifice of a base piece of treachery! This man, who through all temptations had preserved so pure his native generosity and kindness of heart, must be entangled in the snare which his rash youthful foot had touched years before!

This, or something like this, was what I said to him when I found words at last, and I added that I could not endure the thought, and eagerly asked if there were no possible way--none--to escape from the toils?

"Sit down," said the prince, bringing me to the fireplace in which a comfortable fire was burning, offering me an easy chair and taking another himself "Did I not say that you were an original? For none but a man who has preserved to his thirtieth year a considerable share of the innocent philosophy of his childhood, could hit upon the idea of asking a prince of Prora if it is not still possible to carry patiently through his whole life an insult offered him before a score of witnesses."

He said this in a very friendly manner, and with an attempt to smile, but his pale lips quivered and the spot on his cheek glowed a deeper red.

"I am no child," I said; "but it may well be that a man who has lived so solitary a life as mine, is an incompetent judge of the customs and principles that rule the great world. I only know that in my heart a voice cries: this must not be! Must it be then? Are those laws which I confess I do not understand, as inflexible as fate?"

"Yes; it must be," the prince replied. "I also have considered it--not for my own sake, but for the sake of those to whom I would gladly have been something--but it must be."

"And your rank----?" I began.

"Does not excuse me," he answered, with a smile like that of a teacher who dissipates the crude and futile objections of a pupil, "I am not a sovereign prince, though my ancestors were sovereigns. I am a nobleman like other noblemen, and subject to the same laws. My antagonist is noble too: the house of Sommer-Brachenfeld, of which he comes by direct descent, is an ancient race, nearly as ancient as my own."

"But a notorious profligate, a miserable adventurer like this man--has he not dispossessed himself of the right of being challenged to the field by a prince Prora?"

"I fancy not," the prince replied, still with the same good-natured smile. "The man is an adventurer, it is true; but I saw in Ireland a fellow who descended from the legitimate kings of the green isle of Erin, and who was a keeper of hogs; and in Paris, in a cafè chantant, I saw the genuine scion of an ancient ducal house, who was singing indecent songs to the guitar before an audience of men in blouses and women of the streets. Now an actor at a Royal Theatre is quite a respectable person. And again, have I been no profligate in my time? And can I know what would have become of me if the family council had really cut me off from the succession, and thrust me out into the world with an indemnity in money? However large the sum might have been, it would not have lasted long, and then--no, no, I have no right on this ground, not even an excuse, to avoid a duel, supposing that I looked for an excuse; but I look for none."

We both remained silent. Without, the winter wind swept through the streets and howled and whistled around the palace, like a hungry wolf around the fold; and here in the room the light beamed so soft from the lamps upon the marble tables, over the splendid furniture, on the hearth the fire glowed and sparkled so cosily, and surrounded by all the splendor, and illuminated by the soft light, at the fire upon his own hearth, sat the master of this house, who did not even look for an excuse to avoid a duel with an adventurer who had nothing at risk but his own bare life.

"I look for none," said the prince again. "Indeed I believe that though there were the most indisputable justification of such a course, I should decline to avail myself of it. I will say nothing of the fact that it is impossible for me to live in the consciousness that such an insult is unavenged--as impossible as for me to live by picking pockets--but I have a feeling which I cannot shake off that this is a doom which has fallen upon me, against which all resistance is unavailing."

He raised his eyes as he said this, and his look fell upon the portrait of the young cavalier in the fantastic costume, which he had told me represented his father, and which hung at some distance from us, brilliantly illuminated by the light of a large lamp.

"Altogether unavailing," he repeated, with a deep sigh, turning his face from the portrait to the flame on the hearth, upon which his eyes remained vacantly fixed, while his pale lips moved as if uttering words which I could fancy I heard, though they were unspoken: "altogether unavailing!"

This was the same fatal presentiment that had laid its spell upon me from the first. The events that had just now taken place, had been prepared long, long ago; they had stood already written in the stars that glittered on that autumn night when the young prince stole through the park of Zehrendorf to his love. I sat there, my fevered brow resting on my hand, and thought of that night, and how I was summoned to guard her who did not wish to be guarded, who even then was planning and weaving the web of treachery, and was even then a wanton, who, if I could believe what the good Hans told me, had been in this case the betrayer and not the betrayed, and who yet like a vengeful fury pursued the man who was guilty of no wrong towards her, except that of being her first lover, if he was the first.

I must have spoken aloud some part of the thoughts that were passing through my mind while the prince was walking up and down the room, and at last stopped beside me and laid his hand upon my shoulder:

"True heart," he said, "how true you are, and how you increase the debt which I have never yet paid you, and which I would so gladly pay before it is too late. Perhaps it will be something if I do for you what I would do for none other: if I try to justify myself to you for the part I have played in this unfortunate affair. Perhaps too I owe it to her; and I would fain settle all my debts: I would wish that one man lived who will know, if Prince Carl von Prora falls, how and why it was that he died."

He checked me with a gesture as I was about to speak, and proceeded, his soft beautiful eyes fixed upon the fire which was now dying out on the hearth:

"You think that Constance never loved, neither me nor any other; that it was not in her nature to love, and that therefore no one could be a traitor to her. In this way you attempt to justify me; but you are wrong. Constance really loved me, and still I did not betray her. Whether I loved her or not is another question, which I cannot affirm--which I would not for much be able to affirm. I was very young when I first saw her at that unlucky watering-place; scarcely more than a boy; and I may have loved her as boys love, romantically, passionately, and yet not deeply. I know I behaved like a madman when my father came and said that I could never marry the daughter of a professional gamester and notorious smuggler, especially when the girl was not even the legitimate child of this dishonored father. But this you know: I told you all this; and this was all the prince then told me. But this was not all that he might and should have told me. And his telling me but half the truth while he concealed that which was of most importance, out of what I must call false shame of appearing to his son in the light of an evil example, and out of prudery to the world which had long known him as a pious man and protector of the church, this is the evil seed from which has sprung this disaster for me and for himself.

"I cannot say that the prince's warning was altogether fruitless, nor can I say that I was convinced by it. I was a boy, a wild spoiled boy, accustomed to having my own will because it was my will--my own will often against my will. So was it here. The prince, convinced of my obedience, committed the imprudence of sending me, accompanied by my tutor, to Rossow, to hunt there, to recover my injured health, and to pay court to the fair Countess Griebenow, who was allotted to me by common consent of both families. How easy it is for a youth with money enough in his pocket, to bribe his servants, I need not say. I spent the morning at Griebenow, and the evening--you know where. But you do not know, and probably would not believe upon any other authority, that my courtship was carried on in very nearly the same style and tone in both places. I repeat it, I was young, very young, and youthful modesty and a certain chivalrous sense of honor, which is perhaps native to me, always restrained me, even in the secrecy of Constance's apartment. Whether it was female modesty, or calculation--probably both; for I have rarely found women in which both were not present together--she always knew how to keep me in limits, and scarcely at rare intervals allowed me to kiss her hand. She maintained this rigor so firmly that I was more than once convinced she loved some other; and you can conceive whom I believed this other to be. Thus the play went on which had very nearly been brought to a sudden end by our meeting in the wood, and on the very day following I succeeded in realizing a long-concerted scheme, and carrying off my beloved. I had made her no promises, but she asked none, and no doubt thought all would come right if she played her part well. And she played it just as before; and while we were looked upon by all the world as a pair of unlawful lovers, and were pursued in all directions by my father's letters and couriers, I had received no favor from her beyond the privilege of kissing her hand.

"I had made my preparations so skilfully that I escaped all the prince's researches, though he moved heaven and earth to find the fugitives. He would have started in pursuit himself, no doubt, only his alarm at what had happened, brought on a violent attack of his old gout. And well had he cause to be alarmed."

The prince suddenly arose from his chair, and walked once or twice across the room, stopping again before the portrait of his father, at which he looked with a darkened countenance. He then resumed his seat, and proceeded:

"I had already got as far as Munich, when the old servant whom you have seen overtook us. He was the bearer of a letter in cipher, in which there was important information from various members of my family, and a few lines in my father's own hand, upon reading which I had laughed aloud. They ran: 'I adjure you by all that you hold sacred, to part from her at once if you do not wish to load yourself with a horrible crime: Constance von Zehren is your sister.'"

"Great heavens!" I cried.

"As I said," continued the prince, "I laughed; laughed madly at the thought, and then felt a shudder run over my whole body and seem to settle in my heart.

"The letter referred me to the old servant for further particulars, until the prince was in a condition to write me more fully. He, who from his youth had been attached to the prince's person, and had accompanied him upon all his travels, was better able than any other to explain the matter. He had been with the prince in Paris at the time when Herr von Zehren arrived there in his wild flight from Spain with his beloved. The two gentlemen had been very intimate friends, and at our court the two handsome stately young men went by the names of Orestes and Pylades. But it seems that this friendship was much shaken when the prince married my mother, whom Herr von Zehren had also courted. Whether the prince could never forgive his friend this rivalry, or whether Herr von Zehren, who was a man of fierce and uncontrolled passions, gave the prince afterwards any cause of offence--I do not know: but it appears that the prince was not only fascinated by the charms of the young Spanish lady, who tormented by her conscience, and perhaps as weak-minded as she was beautiful, bestowed upon her lover's friend a confidence which he abused, and perhaps also a love which he only did not refuse.

"Was the prince the father of the child which passed for Herr von Zehren's? It could not be certainly known; and the doubts which the prince himself had on this point might never have been removed; for when a few years later the unfortunate woman came to Rossow, where the prince was then staying, and threw herself, with dishevelled hair at his feet, crying that he was the father of her child, imploring him to protect her and her child from their pursuer, and to tell her the way to Spain--at this time she was a mere maniac. But there were other confirmatory circumstances. An old female servant--the same horrible old woman who was with Constance later, and whom you probably knew--declared that her young mistress had told her the secret from the first. She may have lied; but nature rarely deceives, and the prince found in the child, which he contrived to see privately, a likeness of which perhaps a trace may still be discovered in that picture yonder."

The prince pointed with trembling hand to the portrait of his father; but he only told me what I had discovered for myself while he was telling me this frightful story. He must have read in my looks what I did not venture to express, for he continued, fixing his beautiful melancholy eyes upon me:

"You see it too, do you not? We easily discover the truth when it is pointed out to us; and I perceived it while the old woman was making her terrible confession, and I blessed a merciful heaven that had saved me from an awful crime. But how to free myself from this wretched entanglement? Perhaps I should have disobeyed the prince's orders and told Constance the whole truth; but I cannot too often repeat that I was very young, and not in a condition to judge what might be all the consequences of my hasty resolution. So I thought I should be managing with great adroitness if I could continue to inspire Constance with hate of me, or at least aversion, for the love that I now regarded with horror. The means of attaining this end she had herself supplied me in her arts of keeping me at a distance, in which I now was disposed to see more than mere calculation. I returned her caprice with caprice, her obstinacy with obstinacy, her coldness with coldness; I played my game so well that I could not fail to win. What she suffered, I never heard her say; but I saw it in her face which grew paler day by day, in her eyes in which there often seemed to be the fire of madness.

"At last came the catastrophe. After a violent scene, which I had provoked, in Naples, whither we had come on our travels--I do not now know why or how--I parted from her, in the firm conviction that she would employ the ample means I had left at her disposal, either in returning, or in the flight with which she had often threatened me. But this would have been insufficient for the revenge which she conceived such treachery as mine deserved. She, whom I had held to be the proudest of the proud, who refused to belong to the Prince of Prora unless he made her his wife--she cast herself into the arms of the first comer, a wretched coxcomb whose acquaintance we had made by the way. I shudder when I think what this first step must have cost the unhappy girl; but I shudder still more when I think how little all subsequent steps have cost her."

He sighed deeply, and his sigh awakened a terrible echo in my own breast. I sprang up and took a stride towards the door.

"Where are you going?" asked the prince.

I grasped my temples with both hands; my brain seemed on fire.

"I do not know," I said, "I only know that this duel must not take place."

The prince smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

"It is a queer business, altogether," he said.

"And is there no remedy--none?" I cried.

"Not that I know of," the prince answered with the same kindly melancholy smile. "The young man would have to declare that he was out of his senses. And that would not help; for any one who declares his own insanity is not insane--ah, there you are, dear Edmund!"

I had not seen that Count Schlachtensee had entered the room behind me. The prince advanced to meet him, and took his hand: the count said "I come----" and then checked himself and fixed a surprised look on me whom he now observed for the first time.

"I must now take leave of you," said the prince. "I thank you heartily for your visit--heartily," and he grasped my hand firmly in his own which was small and delicate as a woman's. "Farewell!"

I was at the door when he followed me and gave me his hand again. "Farewell," he said once more, and added in a low tone, "perhaps for ever!"

I stood in the street, with the snow driving into my face. I turned back to look at the palace, and saw upon the lowered curtain the shadows of two men who were pacing up and down the room. They were the prince and his cousin; and I knew what they were conversing about, and that there was not a moment to be lost. I called a hackney-coach that was passing, and ordered the coachman to drive as quickly as possible to the lodging of the actor Von Sommer, who went by the name of Lenz.

CHAPTER XXIV.

I have often in later days tried to recall the state of mind in which I was on this miserable night: but have never been able perfectly to do so. So I am conscious than any account I can now give of it must be a most imperfect one. I can only say that I was overpowered by an emotion which was probably the intensest form of pity--a feeling always peculiarly strong with me, and which on far lighter occasions is aroused in my breast to an extent which must appear absurd and childish to shrewder and more coldblooded persons. Perhaps the extraordinary statements which I had just heard might have affected me differently, had the persons concerned been entire strangers to me; but this they were not. Constance had played an important and fateful part already in my life; the young prince had come into contact with me at eventful moments; and I had loved Constance, and the prince had inspired me with interest and sympathy such as an older brother might feel for a younger. What had happened appeared to me awful, and what was to happen, terrible. True I had again a dim consciousness that I could do nothing to hinder the march of fate, that I had started upon an idle, an insane expedition; but what was this to the voice that cried within: It must not be! it must not be!

In this intense excitement which now seems to me to have bordered on insanity, I reached the lodgings of the actor. He was greatly surprised at seeing me, but received me with politeness, and conducted me from the room in which I found him with one of his companions at the theatre, into another apartment to hear what I had to say.

But what had I to say? Good heavens, there was so much to be said, or else so little! The much I could not tell him, for I felt that I had no right to disclose the secret, and that if I had revealed it, he would have considered it a wretched device suggested by the prince's cowardice. And the little--that the duel must not take place--what good could that do? What could the man do but shrug his shoulders and look sharply into my eyes to see if I was quite in my senses? He was a young man with a face wasted by a life of dissipation, and yet handsome, and with very expressive large dark eyes, and I felt how my cheeks flushed under their steady gaze. Under their gaze, and at the words which almost forced their way through my lips, the words that if he desired vengeance on Constance's lover--one who had been her lover at a time when he claimed her as his own--he should select the right man--he should come to me rather than the prince. And though I bit my lips to restrain myself from saying this, the words forced their way through my teeth in a hoarse hissing tone, which the other probably took for the accents of rage that could scarcely be controlled.

"That is your business then," he said, rising from his chair. "A favored or a betrayed lover, I do not know which. Very well: I shall meet you, sir, you may rely upon it; and every one who has or pretends to have any claim upon the lady's favor. But each in his turn, sir, each in his turn; you have come some hours too late; and you will perceive that I can settle with my antagonists only in the order in which they present themselves. Is there any other way in which I can serve you?"

He made me a polite bow, as he finished, and added: "Through this door"--indicating by a gesture--"you can pass at once into the hall."

I had also arisen and stood facing him. I could have stricken this slender delicate man, feeble and nerveless from a life of dissipation, to the earth with a single blow; the puny arm which he extended towards the door with a theatrical gesture as I hesitated, I could have crushed in my hand. It was the only time in my life that I was ever tempted to abuse my physical strength; but I withstood the temptation, and forced myself out of the room and out of the house.

The coach was still standing at the door.

"Where am I to drive now?" asked the man.

I directed him to Constance's lodging, and we drove off. It was bitter cold, and the glass of the coach-window was encrusted with sleet, the crystals of which sparkled and glittered in the light of the street-lamps as we passed them. I noticed it, and mechanically counted the seconds that elapsed until we passed another lamp, when I again observed the sparkling and glittering, and recalled to mind certain optical laws which seemed to bear upon this phenomenon, as if I had nothing else in the world to do on my way to see Constance von Zehren, Prince Prora's sister.

The coach stopped.

Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour--it was now probably eleven o'clock--the door was opened at once; the hall and stairway were lighted up: they seemed in this house to be accustomed to late arrivals and departures. As I rang at the door upon which stood, in great golden letters, "Ada Bellini, Actress at the Theatre Royal," I heard the rustling of a dress inside, and the next moment Constance stood before me. She had doubtless expected a different visitor, and started back with a cry. I closed the door, caught her by the hand as, with a face white with terror, she endeavored to escape, and said:

"I must speak with you, Constance."

"You want to murder me!" she said.

"No; but I intend to prevent another being murdered on your account. Come!"

I drew her, half by force, into the brightly lighted, almost gorgeous parlor which she had just left, leaving the door open after her, and led her to a chair in which she took her seat, her eyes uneasily watching all my movements.

"Have no fear," I said. "Do not be in the least alarmed. Once in long-past days you called me your faithful George, who was to kill all the dragons lurking in your path. Hitherto I have had no opportunity; or did not use it if I had. The hour is now come; but I cannot do it alone: you must help me and will help me."

"Are you assured of that?" she asked.

Her face had suddenly assumed another expression; the terror which had been previously imprinted upon it, had vanished and made way for a look of dark hatred, the same look that it wore that night when she adjured me to avenge her on the prince.

I do not know how I found the words, but I said what I had come to say.

"What does the prince pay you for it?"

This question was her reply.

It was the same reply that I had expected from the actor, and it was not to hear this that I had held my tongue before him. Here it was different: it was the sister to whom I was speaking: she must believe me: I must find the place in her heart: nature could not so belie herself.

And whether it was that I succeeded in touching the mysterious bond that unites two beings whose veins flow with the same blood; whether it was that Constance's clear intelligence could not reject the proof that I offered, I saw that the dark look passed away from her face, and gave way to a confusion, an astonishment, that passed into actual horror.

"It was that, then!" she murmured; "that was the reason! And that then was the reason that I hated my father--no, he was not my father--and that he hated me! That--but then she must have known it! no, no, it cannot be!"

She had sprung from her chair.

"Where are you going?" I asked, seizing her hand.

She tore herself loose and rushed from the room.

I remained, hesitating what to do; I feared for a moment she was going to kill herself; and then I heard her coming back, not alone.

She re-entered, dragging after her the decrepit form of an old woman, whom under other circumstances I should have taken for a housekeeper or something of the sort, and in whom I recognized, with a shudder of disgust, old Pahlen.

How this horrible creature, after her escape from prison, found her way to her mistress, I never learned; but the closer the relations that had existed, as mistress and servant, between them, the fiercer was the rupture, and more frightful the reckoning.

"Here! here!" cried Constance, dragging the woman almost to my feet, "here she is! George. I adjure you by heaven and all that is holy, kill this monster who would have plunged me into horrible crime."

Constance's words, her passion, my presence, all combined overwhelmed the wicked woman. I saw in her old wrinkled face, in the sidelong look of her evil eyes, that she knew her guilt; and Constance saw it as well as I; for as the creature with faltering words tried to frame some excuse, she cut her short with a cry of rage, almost a yell, that long after sounded in my ears; "Begone! out of my sight! wretch! monster!"

The wretch was no doubt glad of the chance of escape for which her sidelong eyes had been searching before, and rushed out of the door. I never saw her again, and know not how long afterwards she dragged out her wretched existence, nor when and how it ended.

Constance was pacing up and down the room, with a face which showed her entire conviction of the truth, and wringing her hands in anguish. Suddenly she threw herself upon her knees in a corner of the room, and seemed to pour forth her heart in agonized prayer. I observed that where she knelt a small ivory crucifix was attached to the wall, and that from time to time she separated her hands to make the sign of the Cross, and then clasped them again in fervent prayer. Later I learned, by chance, that Constance, when in Italy, had returned to the Catholic church, the faith of her mother. Whatever spiritual peace she may have afterwards found, after confession and long penance, as the abbess of a Roman convent, at this moment her prayers seemed to be unavailing. She arose from the crucifix only to fall at my feet, to clasp my knees, and to beg me to avert the frightful consequences of what she had done. I raised her, saying that I had already done all that was in my power, and that I had come to her to learn if she could do nothing.

"There is but one means," she said; "and that is to prevail if possible upon Herr Lenz to quit the field--to leave here immediately."

"How can we do that? The man is evidently your tool, the tool of your revenge; and it is no longer in your control--or do you think it is?"

"It may be, it may be," she said, in a low hurried tone. "He knows that I do not love him; he knows about Carl, and that has made him furious; but I know that he loves me, and that for the prize of my hand, which I have always refused him, he would consent to anything--to anything! Am I not fair enough, George, for a man to consent to anything for my sake?"

She threw back with trembling hands the dark lustrous masses of hair from either side of her face, and smiled upon me. I have only once in my life seen such a face, and that was when, in the Glyptothek at Munich, I saw the Rondanini Medusa, and then the world-celebrated mask seemed to me but a weak copy.

"Come!" I said. She was about to start just as she was: I wrapped her in a cloak of furs which she had probably worn from the theatre, and which was lying on the floor. We left the house and drove to the lodging of Herr von Sommer. The house was closed. Some minutes passed before our repeated knocking brought the porter to the door.

"Herr von Sommer set out half an hour ago."

"Do you know where he was going?"

"He did not say, further than that he would not be back for several days."

"Is no one in the house that can give further information?"

"Hardly: he took his own servant with him."

"You have no idea where he was going?"

"None. He went in a droschky."

I saw that nothing more was to be got out of the man, who stood shivering in his sheepskin cloak; and in fact he cut short the interview by shutting the door with a muttered oath.

Constance who had followed me, had heard all.

"Perhaps we can learn from him."

We drove to the palace of the prince. Our progress was slow; a furious gale was blowing, and the wretched horse could scarcely drag the coach through the snow-drifts. I fancied that our own slow journey was an emblem of repentance, which toils painfully after the evil deed that it can never overtake.

At last we reached the palace. As we got out, I cast an involuntary look towards the sky. From a clear space, the blackness of which contrasted with the white clouds that were driving with arrowy speed across the sky, looked down upon us the calm eternal stars. The words of Constance's favorite song came into my mind:

Alas, this starry love had guided her far astray--had brought her at last here, in this fearful night, to the house where the sister was knocking at the door of her brother whom she had involved in the web of death.

The palace was dark; only the two lamps on either side the great entrance were burning, and their golden light, in which the snow flakes were once more fluttering down, shone dimly, as it had done a year before at the unhappy meeting between us two at this very spot.

I rang the bell: I heard its hollow clamor dully reverberating in the hall of stone, as in a great sepulchral vault. No one came. At last after minutes of agonizing expectation, the door was opened: a man in his shirt-sleeves, with a light in his hand, stood before me. The fellow's face was flushed with drinking and his eyes glassy; it was evident that in the servants' hall the master's absence had been turned to good account. He was about to close the door in my face, but I set my foot against it and pushed in. The man then recognized me, having seen me at the palace twice already to-day, and probably before at Rossow. He answered my questions with disagreeable servility. His highness had driven out half an hour before with the count; not in his own carriage, but in a hired droschky taken from the stand. He did not know where his highness had gone; his highness often went out in a droschky. He would certainly not be back until very late, if he came back at all to-night. He, for his part, had leave to go to bed.

It was evident that it was high time the fellow was making use of this permission, for he tottered with sleep while he stammered out these words. It was the same report that I had received at the other house: both parties had already left the city, to go heaven only knew where: somewhere where their meeting might be undisturbed. I said to Constance that we could do no more.

"I will go home and pray," she said.

Was it a reminiscence from the tragedy in which she had been playing? Was it really for her the close of the tragedy of her life? She spoke no word further as we went home, except that once she said:

"I have at least helped you to your happiness."

I do not know what she meant.

CHAPTER XXV.

When I reached home it was one o'clock--a fact which I could scarcely comprehend. It seemed to me as if not hours but weeks had elapsed since I parted from Hermine. I went on tip-toe to her room and bent over her bed, where she lay sleeping, one arm beneath her head, like a slumbering child. And like that of a child was the expression of her face, as though a happy dream were passing through her spirit. It seemed to me like a crime to sit watching, with a world of sorrow and anguish in my soul, by the side of this blessed peace; and yet slumber was impossible to me. So I put the shade before the night-lamp again, and went to my own bed-chamber where I had already lighted a lamp.

In the dim light of this lamp which only made a few objects in the room visible while the rest were plunged in darkness, I sat for hours before the hearth in which the last spark had long died out from the ashes, revolving in my breast thoughts indescribably painful. In vain did I endeavor to recall my old cheerful courage; it seemed to have died out, like the embers in the ashes before me, which had once glowed as brightly and sparkled as cheerfully: in vain did I try to bring to my memory all the goodness and kindness that life had brought me hitherto, and in which it still was rich; nothing would appear to me in the old light: all was empty, gray, and dead, as though the world were but a scene of devastation and decay, and I were wandering comfortless and alone, among the ruins of splendors long passed away.

A reaction from my excessive excitement must have overcome me at last. I dreamed that there was a gray twilight that was neither night nor day. I was wandering alone upon the bleak ridge of the promontory at Zehrendorf, and a bitter piercing wind was blowing from the sea. All was waste and desolate, and there was nothing to be seen but the ruin of the old Zehrenburg, which rose dumb and defiant in the twilight. But when I looked at it, it was not the old castle, but a gigantic statue of stone, which was the Wild Zehren looking with dull glazed eyes towards the west, where his sun had set forever in the eternal sea. And though no light illuminated the gray twilight, a bright glitter flashed from a golden chain which was on the neck of the stone giant who was the Wild Zehren, and spurs of gold gleamed upon his feet of stone, and brightly flashed the bare blade of the broad knight's sword which lay across his knees of stone. And as, full of inward terror, I watched the statue, a small figure came through the tall broom and drew near the stone giant, which it crept lurkingly around, and watched from all sides. And the queer small figure was the commerzienrath, and he made the oddest faces and cut the strangest capers when he found the giant was so fast asleep. Suddenly he began to clamber up the knees, then stood upon tip-toe and took the golden chain from the giant's neck and hung it around his own, then sprang down and took the sword, and lastly the golden spurs, which he buckled on. Then with ridiculous pomposity he strode backwards and forwards in the knight's accoutrements, and tried to brandish the sword, but could not lift it, while his spurs kept catching in the high broom and tripping him, and the heavy chain upon his shoulders pressed him down, so that he suddenly became a decrepit and bowed old man who could scarcely stand upon his feet, and still tried to balance himself like a rope-dancer, upon the sharp edge of the precipice where the chalk-cliff fell perpendicularly to the sea. I strove to call to him to have a care for Hermine's sake, but I could neither speak nor move; and suddenly he fell over the cliff. I heard the heavy fall of his body upon the pebbly beach, and the giant begun to laugh, a laugh so loud, so terrible that I awakened in fright, and with wildly-beating heart looked around the room, into which, through the curtains, there fell a gray twilight which was neither night nor day, just as it had been in my dream, and I still heard the resonant peals of laughter, but they were blows with which some impatient hand was battering at the house-door. I hastened to open it myself.

"What is the matter?" I asked.

"A message for Herr Hartwig, and--and--ah! you are there yourself, Herr Hartwig, I see."

It was a servant from the hotel at which for many years my father-in-law had been in the habit of stopping whenever he came to the town.

"Yes; what is the matter?"

"My master sends his respects, and--and the Herr Commerzienrath has just been found dead in his bed."

I stared aghast into the face of the man: he probably thought that I had not understood him, and stammered out his awkward message again; but I had perfectly well understood him at first; that is, I had understood the meaning of his words. The commerzienrath has been found dead in his bed. That is very easily said, and as easily understood. The commerzienrath had been found dead in his bed.

"I will come at once," I said.

The man hastened off; I went back to my room, put on my overcoat and hat, took a pair of dark gloves instead of the light ones I had worn the previous evening--all quite mechanically, as if I were going out about some ordinary business. "The commerzienrath has been found dead in his bed," I repeated, as I would have repeated a report brought to the office that a belt had broken in such and such a shop.

Then suddenly a pang darted through me as if a dagger had been thrust into my breast.

"Poor child!" I muttered, "poor child, how will she bear it? But there is so much misfortune in the world; so much misfortune, and he was an old man."

Thus I left the house, in which the inmates already began to be stirring.

"You are going out early this morning," said the porter, coming out of his lodge. "Anything happened at the works?"

I did not answer: not until I had reached the street did I comprehend the meaning of the man's words. It was now near seven o'clock, and already clear daylight. The wind had hauled to westward, and was blowing hard. It was raining: streams of water poured from the roofs, and the heavy snow that had fallen in the night was mostly changed into gray slush, through which the bakers' and milkmens' carts were toiling heavily. I was shivering, and said to myself that it was a very disagreeable morning; but no other feeling awakened in me. At a corner I met a hearse with no following of carriages; the driver upon his high seat had pulled his cocked hat down over his face; the broken-down horses were going at a half-trot; the hearse slipped about in the slush, and the threadbare black pall that was hung over the hearse flapped to and fro in the wind.

"That cannot be the commerzienrath," I said, looking after the hearse with a vacant mind.

Thus I reached the hotel.

"Number eleven: first door to the right at the top of the stairs," said the porter.

He accompanied me up the stairs, more, no doubt, from curiosity than sympathy, and told me that the Herr Commerzienrath had arrived in the last train yesterday evening, and he had been ordered to wake the commerzienrath at half-past six this morning, as he had a note to send to Herr Hartwig. He knocked at the door punctually to the minute, and the Herr Commerzienrath had called out quite plainly: "Very well; let Louis bring my coffee;" and when ten minutes later, Louis took the coffee up, the commerzienrath did not answer, and they found he was dead. Who would have expected it? Such a robust old gentleman! And they sent off at once for Doctor Snellius, because he was Herr Hartwig's family physician, and the doctor would certainly be here in a minute. "This door, Herr Hartwig, this door."

The door was ajar. The landlord, the head-waiter, and another man, if I remember rightly, were standing in the large room, into which the dim light fell through the half-drawn curtains. At the farther end of the room was a bed, before which two lights were burning on a small table.

"We left everything as we found it," said the landlord in a low tone, as he went with us to the bed. "It is a rule with me in such cases to exercise the greatest discretion. One has then no reason to reproach oneself, and avoids much inconvenience. The Herr Commerzienrath is lying precisely as Louis found him; and there lies the tray with coffee where Louis put it down."

There lay the tray with coffee where Louis had put it down, and there lay the commerzienrath as Louis had found him. The light from the two candles, their long wicks unsnuffed, fell brightly enough upon his face into which I now gazed. It was the third time in my life that I had looked closely into the face of the dead. And naturally the other two faces rose in my memory; that of the Wild Zehren, that of my dear and fatherly friend, and now here was this. In the sombre features of the Wild Zehren had lain gloomy defiance, like those of an Indian chief, who, bound fast to the death-stake, sings taunting songs at his tormentors; upon the mild face of his noble brother had lain a sublime calm, as upon the face of one who dies for the sake of others. How different was the face before me! About the large mouth hovered something like the mocking smile which he usually wore when he thought he had overreached any one; his eyes half shut, as he used to shut them when he wished to hide his real meaning: over all the old, wrinkled, yellow face was spread the deceitful cloud in which he loved to hide himself, only that the cloud was drawn now a little closer than usual, and it was not his old cuttle-fish manœuvre, but death.

"And we were so cheerful last night," whispered the host. "We sat in the dining-room until half-past one, and drank three bottles of champagne. The Railroad Director Schwelle was with us. I have warned the old gentleman often enough; at his years one should be more prudent. And such a clear head! Such a head for business! And here lies the note that was to be sent to you this morning."

It was a leaf apparently torn from his pocket-book, with half a page of writing on it; the pencil with which he had written, lay by it. I took up the paper; the characters were very legible, even firmer than his writing usually was of late:

"Dear Son: I arrived here yesterday evening, and would like to speak with you before you go home from the works. May I ask you to wait for me? I must first go on 'Change, where I shall meet many envious faces to-day. They will see to-day how soon an old hand can grind little notches out of his blade. But more of this when we meet. If you are engaged out, please excuse yourself, as I should like to sit at your table once more. But no preparations for me, I beg. Only, if you can manage it conveniently, my favorite dish, Magdeburg cabbage, and a little----"

The bill of fare was broken off, and here lay the guest.

"Death overtook him while he was writing," said the landlord, whose discretion had not hindered him from looking over my shoulder into the paper. "How sudden it comes, sometimes!"

At this moment the doctor stood among us: I had not heard him enter. He nodded to me without speaking, and leaned over the dead man. Thus he remained sometime and then he raised himself up and said to the landlord:

"I wish you would heat for me about a wine-glassful of pure Jamaica rum. It must be perfectly pure rum, and must be brought to a boil. You would probably do better to look after it yourself."

"Certainly, certainly," said the landlord. "It is my duty in such cases to do everything that lies in my power."

"And do you go and see that I get it at once; and you, young man, tell my driver to wait for me."

"Yes sir," said both the waiters at once, and hastened after the landlord.

"Have you any hope?" I asked.

The doctor did not answer. He gave a hurried glance at the door, then stepped again to the bed, threw back the coverlid which the dead man had drawn up over breast and arms as high as the chin, and then I saw that he took out a small phial which he had probably found under the cover in the stiffened hand of the corpse. He smelled its contents cautiously for a moment, then wrapped it in a piece of paper and put it in his waistcoat pocket.

"Unless there is some especial reason for it," he said, "your wife need not know that her father has poisoned himself."

I groaned aloud.

"Courage! courage!" said the doctor; "this is a world in which things are often desperately dark. But this cannot be helped now, and you have to think of your wife and children."

As I went home an hour later, the wind was howling as furious as ever through the rainy streets, and at the same corner I met the same hearse, now coming back in a slouching trot as before. I looked at it without the least emotion or feeling, which seemed indeed to have perished forever in my breast. Yes, yes, the doctor was right: it was often desperately dark in this world; and I do not know that it would have seemed darker to me had I known what I did not know, that in the palace of the prince, which I had to pass on my way home, behind the lowered curtains, the last of the male line of the princes of Prora-Wiek, counts of Ralow, was giving up his young life under the hands of the surgeons.