CHAPTER II.
He had thrown himself down on a lounge that stood near the door, and his head sank on his breast. For a long time he remained in this position apparently forgetting where he was, and to whom he had been telling his dreary, melancholy story.
The dog rose up, and, with a singularly wistful expression in his eyes, went to the side of his master, who now roused himself with an effort, and made as though he would take his departure.
But Julie did not change her position, nor look at him, but merely said in her soft voice:
"What must you have suffered!" Then, after a moment's pause, she went on: "And you have never seen her since?"
"No. I only waited until the child had recovered sufficiently to bear the journey. Then I broke loose from all that held me there, and came to this city. Here I might be a new man--or so I sometimes imagined when I did not think of the past. Yes, the doctors are right--a change of air will work wonders. Do you suppose it was in the slightest degree hard for me to set up my 'saint-factory?' I merely did it so that I might be safe from all dunning letters, and might send the stipulated and very considerable sum, every quarter, to our intermediary in Hamburg. In this way I freed myself from importunities, and consoled myself with the thought that a man need not scruple as to how he earns money that is going to pay for his own shame. A fortunate man, one who lives openly and uprightly, has a right to give himself up to that noblest of all luxuries, the luxury of sacrificing himself to his convictions. If I had had a wife with a pure and noble soul, then it would have been glorious to have accepted even poverty and want in order to remain true to my ideals, and never to have moved a finger except in the service of true art. But as it was--a broken man, a disgraced life--that very stolidity that helped me to bear my fate alone, dulled my susceptibility to all that was base in my money-getting. It was all one, after all.
"And yet, for all that, the old defiance, the old peasant's pride was not quite dead in me even now. One day, in the midst of my work, the thought came over me--'What is she doing now?--who is with her?' Then I sprang to my feet as if I had been stung by an adder, and immediately sat down and wrote to her that I thought it would be more dignified and better for us both to cut the last wretched bond that held us together, so that she might have full freedom. I added that I would provide for her all the same, if she would only consent to a legal separation. I was not ashamed to humiliate myself so far as to beg her to do this. It seemed to me as if the happiness of my future life depended upon my accomplishing this end.
"She kept me waiting for an answer for more than a fortnight. Then she wrote that she could only yield to my request if I would give up the child to her. Who dictated this answer for her, I do not know. Certainly not her heart.
"Give the child into her hands! I would rather have caught it up like a kitten, and thrown it into the sea! I had found a family here--good, honest people--to whose care I could intrust it, and with whose children it is growing up. I myself have a room under the same roof. When I come home of an evening, I only need to open the door a little to see the little motherless thing asleep in its bed. But on Sunday I either stay at home in the afternoon, or take a drive or a walk with it to some place where I am sure of not meeting any curious acquaintances, who might ask me whose child it is. I pass in the city for unmarried. But, for some time past, I have been led to suspect that I have an enemy who is determined I shall not bear that character any longer. Lucie's mother appeared here a year or two ago. Had I known this woman before my marriage, I might perhaps have been warned not to trust those violet eyes. She has some hidden object for being here; she follows all my movements--I know that she wishes me ill--that letter to you confirms it. But, perhaps, it was better so. The letter that I wrote to you last night, who knows whether I should have had the courage to send it to-day? And yet, every hour longer that I kept you in the dark would have been a reproach to me. And now--"
"I have a great favor to ask of you," she suddenly interrupted.
"Julie, what could you ask that I would not joyfully--"
"I would love so dearly to see the child. Will you bring it to me? or will you go there with me?"
He took a step toward her; now, for the first time, he ventured to look her in the face. She rose and went forward to meet him.
"Dear friend," she said, "I must know this child. No matter how well it may be taken care of where it is, it is and always will be motherless. It can only find a mother again in her who loves the father more than all else, and who would take to her heart all that belongs to him. Do you not see that you must bring the child to me?"
"Julie!" he cried, in a tone that burst from his innermost heart, just as when a dreamer with a loud cry shakes off the nightmare that is so suffocating him. He staggered toward her, and tried to seize her hand; but she drew back a step, shook her head gently, and said, with a blush:
"Listen patiently to what I am going to say, or else it will be hard for me to control myself and find the words. The sad story you have just told me has given me a great deal to think of; I have not yet clearly fixed it in my mind. But one thing is already clear to me: that nothing in your past life can ever separate me from you. On the contrary, I have been continually testing my feeling during your confession, and have found that I love you now even more wholly than I did yesterday, and that I know better why I love you, if this is not a senseless thing to say. My heart is old enough to be wise, and to know why it loves any one, though my head is not quite so ready. And so, my dearest friend, I now seriously declare to you, I have not the slightest intention of ceasing to love you because so and so many years ago you made the mistake of believing another human being to be better than she really was. I will go still further: you shall not cease to love me either, unless you made a second mistake yesterday, which I confess would be much more painful to me than that first one."
She did not succeed in uttering these last words, for, overwhelmed with joy, Jansen had seized her in his arms. He held her long in this embrace, until at last she recovered breath enough to beg for her release.
"No, no," she said, as she gently freed herself, "do not do so, dear, or I will take it all back again; for you and I are not to be spared our time of trial. Sit down here opposite me like a sensible man, and let go my hands and try to understand all that I have to say to you. You see, your sweetheart is no longer young, and much too experienced and worldly not to keep her senses about her, and think for two even at such a time, hard as it may be. I will not retract a word of what I just confessed--that I will not relinquish the happiness of feeling myself to belong to you, because you are not yet free. I love you all the more dearly for what I now know, for the delicacy with which you have tried to spare her who has so cruelly wounded you; for the fact that you have not sought, even at the cost of a public trial, to break the bond that holds you together; for the affection that has grown up within you for your child, so that you do not hesitate to sacrifice your liberty for its sake. Whether this sacrifice is necessary we will consider more fully. But let this be as it may, let human justice come to our aid or not: this I know, that from this time forth I will devote my life to you, that I could no longer belong to myself even if I tried. Everything else seems petty beside it, and there must be some place in the world where we shall find our happiness in one another. But one thing must happen first; you must learn to know me thoroughly. Do not smile and say needless things that I know beforehand. You really do not know me as I am, or as I know you, because I have seen your art and know your life, and more especially because I, as a woman who has been looking at the world for thirty-one years, know human nature much better than a man like you, who have the additional disadvantage of being an artist, and therefore blinded by a touch of beauty. Do you not see that in ten years I shall be an old woman, no longer like your Eve, and then what would you think of me, unless my inner being was necessary to your life and worthy of your love and constancy? And for that reason you must resolve to let a barrier remain between us for a whole year yet. You may be sure it has cost me a hard struggle to lay such a condition on myself; we have already lost so many happy years of youth. It seems cruel that, in addition to all this, we must have a long engagement. But the more dearly I love you, and wretched as I should be if you did not stand the test, the more bravely I must and will adhere to my resolution. Then, besides, have I not to win your child's heart, so that it will not draw back, as from a stranger, from her whom it is to call mother?"
She gazed in his face with a look of the deepest faith and tenderness, and reached him her hand across the table at which they were both sitting. He grasped it so tightly that she smilingly tried to withdraw it again.
"Perhaps you are right," said he, seriously. "At all events I think you understand all these things far better than I do, for to tell the truth, I am still so stunned with the thought of this happiness, that you could make me consent to anything you asked. Good God! with what a heart I came in that door--a doomed man, a lost wretch--and now, and always--"
He was just on the point of starting up again--the place at her feet which the dog had occupied seemed to have an attraction for him--when they heard old Erich's voice in the front parlor, saying to some one, in its driest tone, that his mistress was not at home for anybody today.
"Not even for me?" queried this some one. "I must hear her say so herself before I will believe it."
"Angelica!" cried Julie. "We ought not to shut out this dear creature from our happiness."
She sprang up and hastened out before her friend--to whom any third person was hateful at such a moment--could make any objection.
"Don't be afraid of him!" she cried, leading the astonished Angelica into the room triumphantly. "It is true he is a perfect Berserker, and not a good man to quarrel with. But for that very reason you must take my part against him. Two staid women of our age ought to have no difficulty in controlling such a violent man. And isn't it your duty to help me out of the trouble into which you got me yourself? Dear Jansen, do not put on such an angry face! Tell this dear, good, astonished friend that we are resolved, in all seriousness, never again to lose sight of one another after having been brought together in so strange a way, thanks to art and to this excellent artist, whom we will not leave without her reward!"
There was nothing left for Jansen but to make the best of the matter, and say a few friendly words to Angelica. But his whole soul was in such commotion that he soon relapsed into a state of absentmindedness. He listened with half an ear to what his beloved was saying to Angelica, who did not sustain her part of the conversation very well, and who uttered none of those bright sayings with which she was generally so ready. That the two women friends should take up their quarters together; that the visits of the fiancé should only take place on certain days and in her own presence; that, for the present at least, they would not disclose the great event even to their most intimate friends in "Paradise"--all this and more was discussed, the burden of the conversation falling almost entirely on Julie. A certain lightheartedness had taken possession of her, such as her friend had never seen her show before. She insisted upon Jansen and Angelica taking breakfast with her, and played the part of hostess most charmingly. Jansen followed every movement she made, as if he were attracted by a magnet; and was caught more than once returning the most irrelevant answers.
At last, when he really had to go--it was already past noon, but no one had taken any heed of the time--Angelica too rose in great haste.
"I will go on ahead," said she; "lovers don't go through with their leave-takings quite as quickly as we single people."
But Julie detained her. She merely gave Jansen her hand to kiss, and closed the door behind him. Then she fell on her friend's neck and kissed her, her eyes overflowing with tears.
"Forgive me my happiness!" she whispered. "It is so great I am almost afraid of it, as though I had stolen a crown!"
"What a child you are!" said the artist, bending over her and blushing. "I told you how it would be--though really I was not so reckless as you have been. To love this man just as one would any ordinary mortal, to take him to your heart in this sudden fashion--well, I must say, I admire your courage. It is true you are a perfectly charming piece of human nature, from top to toe, and can do things other folks can't. Now, such miserable institutions as we common people are, mere images of God in gouache or water-color--well, we have to be sensible, at all hazards, unless we would bring down ridicule as well as injury upon our heads. Addio, cara! Iddio ti benedica!" and with these words she rushed out of the door.
CHAPTER III.
It was close upon midnight when Rosenbusch, with a heavy sigh, shut the little sketch-book in which he had been scribbling verses on the empty leaves between portraits of horses' heads and studies of costumes and armor, and proceeded to drink off the last drops of his red Würtemberg wine. For more than three hours he had been sitting in the same place in the corner of a quiet little beer-house, where few of the regular guests were to be found to-day on account of the beautiful weather outside, and where those who were present were fully occupied with their customary drink. It would not be very hard to divine what had led our friend hither. First of all, the certainty of not meeting any one whom he knew. Then, probably, an unconscious attraction in the name. The landlord of this little wine-room bore the name of the first man, and it is probable that one who had just been driven from Paradise felt a strong inclination to go and console himself with another Adam over the common fate of the race. In this object he seemed to have been wonderfully successful, partly because of the innocent power of the red Würtemberger, of which this desperate man had managed to empty four Schoppen; partly because of the soothing influence of the muses.
What Rosenbusch had written in his sketch-book had been a melancholy strain; a sad lament over the misappreciation of the world, its hardhearted realism, its effect upon his own fate, and, finally, over his own desperate love affair.
Any one who knew how to read poems might easily have derived from this one the consolation that the author's life was in no immediate danger from the stunning blows which had fallen upon it. The truth is he belonged to those delicately-strung, romantic souls, who consider it almost a moral duty to suffer continually from some gentle inflammation of the heart or fantasy. But the more chronic their state becomes, the less dangerous it is, as a general rule. Unfortunately, in the case of our lyric poet, there was another circumstance which tended greatly to increase the unpleasantness of his situation. Though, by temperament, he was little inclined to passionate catastrophes, he felt, on the other hand, a certain abstract craving for action, which made it impossible for him to be content with looking on at life from a distance. A certain lack of physical courage--for he was of a slender, nervous build--made him feel it incumbent on him to exercise so much the more moral boldness, and to carry a fancy, which another would have quickly put aside--for it had not really taken a very strong hold on him--to some romantic end, or to illustrate it by some adventurous enterprise. This love of dénouements had generally turned out so badly for him that he might well have been discouraged; his friends told the most comical stories of what he had suffered in this way. But in spite of all this, he had just taken the most audacious step of his life, with the deliberate intention of doing something at the same time chivalrous and practical. He, who barely lived from hand to mouth, had seriously appeared as a suitor in the house of a worthy citizen of the good old Munich type, entirely incapable of taking a joke in such a matter. Why matters had been pushed to such an extreme in this particular case, he himself would have found it hard to say. For a long time the affair had run the usual course; first, stolen glances were interchanged from window to window, across the narrow alley; then came the first tributes of homage in the shape of little notes in verse, surreptitiously delivered, and flowery contributions to the Munich daily paper, the Latest News. These effusions were accompanied by much lurking about the streets, which eventually resulted in the formation of the desired acquaintance, and ended in a bold confession of love under the "dark arches" of the Marienplatz. With all her blushing and laughing, and nods and glances, the dear child had managed to draw the line so skillfully that she appeared to refuse his attentions as little as she appeared to encourage them. She treated the whole matter as a joke, as something to be laughed over, but never for one moment to be regarded in a serious light. That the good-looking, dashing, gallant painter found favor in the eyes of his pretty neighbor could not be exactly denied. She even went so far once as to entreat him to keep up his flute practice diligently. She never fell asleep so comfortably as when he was sending forth some really heartrending melody. For the rest she knew very well what to expect of artists, and she had no doubt but what he had copied the beautiful poems he had addressed to her from some book or other.
Rosenbusch felt himself rather flattered than hurt by these doubts; but still this did not advance matters at all, and his dramatic instinct for fresh excitement and change of action was almost in danger of lagging a little, when it received an unexpected impulse from another quarter. He discovered a secret that heretofore had been guarded more carefully than his own; this was the hopeless love that his next-door neighbor, Elfinger, entertained for the sister of his sweetheart.
He felt at once that it was incumbent upon his honor for him to do something which should release them both from this state of unmanly submission to their fate, and of base yearning toward the house of a Philistine, and at the same time push the fortunes of his friend. If he himself could once obtain free access to the house in the character of fiancé to the worldly daughter, Elfinger would have no difficulty in becoming more intimate with her spiritually-inclined elder sister, and would undoubtedly be able to overcome those scruples that had heretofore prevented this singular girl from accepting any of his letters, or even from consenting to strike up an acquaintance with him in the open street.
Confident in this belief, he determined upon the desperate step; and, if he could not muster up sufficient courage, after the miserable termination of his undertaking, to return to his friend with the bad news, let us not think any the worse of his good heart.
Yet we must confess that, as far as he himself was concerned, he regarded this crushing conclusion to the novel as beneficial rather than lamentable. He had done his best, had displayed uncommon courage, and had shown the beautiful being how serious he was in his intentions; but now he felt that he had a right to rejoice in peace over an honorable defeat that permitted him to go on setting his heart on everything that was lovable and unattainable. When at last he stepped out of the wine-room into the square, where the moonlight shone full upon the five bronze statues standing rigidly in their regular rank and file, a feeling of infinite satisfaction stole over him; a malicious joy that he could wander here in flesh and blood beneath the changing moon and have as many love affairs as he liked, while these celebrated dignitaries stood on their pedestals unable to move a muscle. He even caught himself beginning to sing in a loud voice; but a moment after he came to a sudden stop. He felt that it was not at all the proper thing for him to go about bawling merry songs, considering the mournful mood he ought by good rights to be in.
So he composed his feelings, and wended his way home in a much more subdued manner. But when he reached his street, and saw the lights in Elfinger's windows blinking down at him, his heart quickly sunk into his boots again. He could not bring himself to go up at this dead hour of the night and confess to his friend how badly the affair had turned out. So he turned swiftly upon his heel, and, taking a roundabout way, finally reached his studio, where he knew he could find tolerable sleeping quarters.
The janitor opened his eyes wide when he was knocked up to open the back-door for Herr Rosenbusch. The white mice, too, quickly sprang up from their pleasant dreams of biscuit and Swiss cheese, and rubbed their snouts against the wire-netting in nervous excitement; for they recognized their master. There he stood in the moonlight, paying no attention to them, firmly planted before the battle of Lützen. He gazed at it for a while in silence; then he felt for the place where his beard was usually to be found.
"You are no fool, after all!" he muttered to himself. "If you had never painted anything but that black charger there, rearing because he has received a bullet in his neck--Basta! Anch' io sono pittore!"
Then he took his flute out of its case, and marched up and down for a while blowing an adagio, in order to dissipate the fumes of the red Würtemberger. At length, when he felt tired enough, he rigged up a bed on the floor out of a Swedish saddle, that he took for a pillow, a saddle-blanket, said to have been used by Count Piccolomini, and a tiger-skin which the moths had eaten until it looked like a variegated geographical chart, but which was popularly supposed to have belonged to Froben, the Master of the Horse. However this might be, it served to make a softer bed for the tired body of the last of the romantic battle-painters; and he stretched himself upon it with a sigh, looked out once more on the moonlight night, and then fell into a deep and dreamless sleep, such as is rarely granted to a disappointed lover.
CHAPTER IV.
Elfinger had been sitting up late into the night awaiting the return of his friend, until at last he was forced to admit that there could be no doubt but what the adventure had not ended very gloriously. He fell asleep with a heavy heart, for his last hopes were now defeated.
The next morning he crept mournfully down to the bank, and left it earlier than usual under some pretext or other. He hoped to find Rosenbusch at home at last. But the little, scantily furnished, untidy chamber of the battle-painter was still vacant.
Could he have done something desperate, left the city or even--?
In great excitement, for he loved his good comrade heartily, he mounted the dark stairs for the second time, after the close of his evening duties at his desk. He found on his little table an unmistakable symbolical sign that his friend was still in the land of the living. A large market-basket stood in the middle, provided with a long paper label such as they put on medicine-bottles; and on it were written these words:
"A REMEDY FOR BEARDLESS ARTISTS.
TO BE TAKEN ACCORDING TO THE NECESSITIES
OF THE CASE.
FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF
THE LEATHER GLOVE."[3]
There was nothing in the basket but the sketch-book, in which the solitary outcast had written his lamentations the night before.
The actor had not yet finished reading the last strophes when the door opened, and Rosenbusch solemnly entered, with such an indescribably mournful expression upon his face that it was impossible to look at him without laughing. As soon as he saw that Elfinger was once more capable of appreciating the humor of the situation, it was easy to perceive that a weight was lifted from his heart. He stepped hastily up to his friend, and, giving him both his hands, cried:
"Drink to the lost, O stranger,
And pray for his poor soul!"
the final words of his own verses.
"But come, brother," he continued, "let us rise superior to our fate, and although our manly spirit may not forbid us to shed a tear--
"So it is all over, and there is no more hope?" interrupted Elfinger, shutting up the sketch-book.
"Over and gone forever! unless I should change my course in my old age and become a cattle-painter, or should crawl back into the womb so as to be born again as a pupil of Piloty. Just conceive it, Roscius! Only yesterday, hardly an hour before I paid my visit to papa, this brave Theban had fallen into the hands of a good friend at the art-club, who had stuffed him with a long account of the wonderfully flourishing financial condition of art in our good city of Munich. A flock of sheep, that had just been sold for eight thousand gulden, and the vivisection of a rabbit by some Hungarian or Pole whom that magician Piloty had developed into a celebrated man in six months, and whose pictures are now sold for unheard-of prices before they leave the easel, had given the two Philistines a chance to air their æsthetics, which are as irrefutable as mathematics. Figures show this. The export of painted canvas from this city, which has attained a gigantic height during the last few years, even surpassing the export of tanned leather, could not but impress even Nanny's unpoetical father. I might have carried off the little jewel without the slightest trouble if I could only have shown him a single cow, or some little historical atrocity. But for battles there was 'no demand'--eternal peace lay before us. How much did I make a year out of my old-fashioned art? Well--I lied like a trooper, and mentioned some unheard of sum for a man in my condition. Whereupon the monster laughed: he knew an animal-painter who had made double that amount from a single sheep's-head, in which, to be sure, you could distinctly perceive the quality of the wool by looking at it through a magnifying-glass. It was then that my temperament played me a shabby trick. I could not resist the temptation to make a disrespectful pun[4]--one, moreover, that was much too obvious to make it worth the while--and after this there was no helping matters. Unfortunately we could distinctly hear a burst of laughter, over my poor joke at papa's expense, proceeding from the adjoining room. The author of it had apparently been unable to withstand her maidenly curiosity, and had been listening to all that had been said. But I--"
He checked himself suddenly. His eyes unconsciously wandered to the windows across the street, and what he saw there caused him to forget the end of his report.
A most charming girl made her appearance behind the window-pane, and two little hands could be seen fastening a little straw-hat firmly on the brown head; then the window was opened and the sky was eagerly scanned, apparently in order to find out whether it threatened rain or promised to be fair. At the window to the left a slim figure could also be discerned, as it shut up some sewing in the drawer of the little work-table, and then threw open the window so that the evening air might benefit the flowers. But while the mischievous eyes of the younger sister, in roving merrily about, lighted on Rosenbusch, who had quickly stepped up to his window, and gave him a stolen glance in passing, the second sister refrained from all such worldly arts and immediately disappeared from the window, after having said something to the younger which the spy opposite could not understand, in spite of the windows being open.
"Elfinger," cried the painter, "it was a wrong conclusion after all. The affair is not over yet by any means, and I am willing to bet that the chapter we have just reached won't be the most tiresome one in this great sensational romance."
He quickly dragged his astonished friend, who, in his despondency, could not understand this sudden change of mood, out of the door and down into the street. They stepped out of the house-door just as the two sisters over opposite crossed the threshold of their home, both modestly veiled, and carrying little black prayer-books in their hands. But, before they turned down the street to the right, a bright smile passed over the face of the younger one, which Rosenbusch noted through her veil and knew well enough how to interpret.
"Let's wait a second," he said. "We'll give them a little start. That little Philistine is a perfect witch! I wonder where she got it from!"
"They seem to be going to church. Is there any open so late as this?"
"You forget that this good city of Munich is called Monachum monachorum. If it's too late for vespers, then it's just early enough for a vigil. So now--march! Otherwise they will be round the corner, and we shall lose track of them."
It was still light in the street, but Sunday evening sets in pretty early in Munich, especially on summer days, when a hot air prevails that is provocative of an early thirst. The two slight girlish figures made their way through the throng in the inner town as skillfully as lizards, now disappearing from the gaze of their faithful followers, and now coming into view again. They turned into a rather broad but deserted side-street, in which stood an insignificant little chapel, scarcely to be distinguished from the row of dwelling-houses, though it had the reputation of enjoying the special protection of the Virgin. A slight jutting out of the decorated façade was the only thing which indicated its whereabouts, just as a well-to-do ecclesiastical gentleman going about in the midst of his flock shows, by the gentle outward curve of his body, that he has dedicated his life to contemplation, and to thanksgiving for all the good gifts of Heaven.
From the low portal of this out-of-the-way little church, which was guarded by a plain wooden door, a dense crowd of worshipers were just streaming forth, mostly old women and shriveled-up old men, and a few early-converted sinners with faded faces and restless looks. No sooner did they come out into the street than most of them gave themselves up to the refreshing enjoyment of fresh air and cheerful conversation--two luxuries which they had been forced to dispense with inside. Only a few wheezing old men crept along alone, counting their beads with their long bony fingers as they went. The pious company were far too much occupied with themselves to pay any attention to the two sisters, who now entered the deserted sanctum. It was dark and gloomy enough within. A gaunt, fellow in a white surplice, who figured as sacristan, was sleepily engaged in putting out the candles on the principal altar, with a rod on which was fastened an extinguisher. When this was done, he spread a covering over the altar-cloth. And now the fading daylight found its only entrance through two arched windows, on which the figures of the Virgin and Joseph with the Child stood out in brilliant red and blue. Over opposite, where two red columns of porphyry supported the organ-loft, deep darkness had already settled down, but faintly broken by the little stumps of tapers before which a few tireless suppliants continued to read in their little books, though the regular service had long since come to an end. An iron stand, with prongs and nails with the sharp ends up, also bore a number of large and small wax-candles, which had been planted there by the devout as a modest offering. A reddish light from this fragrant candelabrum, which stood before one of the side shrines, fell upon the numerous crucifixes and silver votive offerings near the altars, upon the artificial flowers that decorated the reliquaries, and upon the dilapidated finery of the figure of the Madonna standing at the feet of her crucified Son. It had a singularly weird and depressing effect--the soft crackling of the lights, the subdued mumbling from those toothless lips, the sniffing and wheezing of the kneeling old women, and the peculiar smell of the wax-tapers, incense and snuff, which last article seemed to be in constant use to prevent the devotional spirit from falling into a doze.
But all these impressions, which at first almost took away the breath of the two friends, seemed, from long familiarity, to have lost all power over the sisters. After sprinkling themselves with holy-water out of a basin near one of the red columns, they stepped softly up to the candelabrum, and each fastened her little taper to one of the sharp points, carefully lighting it before doing so, and then returned to the columns and knelt down in two of the back pews, one on one side and one on the other of the middle aisle.
Both appeared to be immediately absorbed in devotional exercises, the forehead pressed upon the open prayer-book, the little hands busied with the beads of their rosaries. But they could hardly have had time to repeat a paternoster before the places at their side were occupied by two voluntary participants in their worship. On the footstool to the right, next the startled Fanny, knelt Elfinger, while Rosenbusch had sunk gently down on the stool on the other side, close to his more worldly sweetheart, who appeared not to take the slightest notice of him. The muttering, wheezing, snuff-taking old hags, who sat about here and there, evidently took no offense at this symmetrical group, which quietly busied itself with its own affairs; and only a round, red-faced little priest, who was kneeling before his own taper and reading out of a book, with his spectacles shoved high up on his forehead, seemed to be suddenly disturbed in his perusal. The spectacles quickly slipped down upon his nose, and his little eyes strove earnestly to pierce the dim light that played about the two red columns.
"Are you really in earnest?" whispered Elfinger, bending down close to the ear of his neighbor. "You really want to turn your back upon this beautiful world and bury yourself in a convent? You, so young, so charming, so well fitted to be happy and to make others happy."
A deep sigh was the only response he received. At the same time she almost imperceptibly hitched her stool about half an inch farther away from the speaker, and buried her delicate little nose still deeper in her prayer-book.
"Fräulein Fanny," he whispered, after a pause, "what horrible thing have you seen or experienced in the world that has made you already weary of it? Or does the air here in this house of prayer seem to you easier to breathe than the lovely air of heaven outside? And do you think you will find a convent better ventilated than this place, and filled with a better company?"
"Ave Maria, ora pro nobis, nunc et in hora--" murmured the girl, making the sign of the cross.
"And do you think I will be put off in this way?" whispered Rosenbusch to his neighbor. "Oh, my adored Fanny, you do not know me! If painting battles does not exactly make a man fat, it makes him strong, bold as a lion, invincible. You shall see what heroic deeds I will yet accomplish--on condition, of course, that you remain faithful and true to me. Or do you doubt me?"
She was silent for a moment. A quick, mischievous side-glance rested on him for an instant: "Go away!" she whispered, scarcely above her breath. "You are only joking. It was very wrong of you to follow us here. I still have six paternosters to repeat, and it is a positive sin--"
"It's a sin of your papa, sweet Nanny mine, to shut you up like a nun and let you go nowhere but to church, as if a young creature needed nothing but to be pious. When should one be merry, then, unless it is when one is young? Come, Fräulein Nanny, if your father had not been so angry yesterday, and I were sitting by your side--not here in the dark corner, but in your own house on the sofa--and were whispering all sorts of silly love-talk in your ear, and your sister, who was left to matronize us, should find her presence absolutely necessary in the kitchen, and--"
The round red face in the window-niche assumed a highly displeased expression, for the two heads near the red columns had approached so near together that their hair touched, and the softest whispering sufficed to make itself understood. Over opposite, where the other couple were, a space two spans broad still intervened between the two kneeling figures. But even there not a syllable appeared to be lost.
"I know I have no right to hope for any great happiness," whispered Elfinger. "I am a poor cripple. If you reply by saying that it is a piece of audacity for me to hope, with my single eye, to find favor in the most beautiful pair of eyes that ever read in a prayer-book, I find it very natural. Yes, you will even do me a favor, Fräulein Fanny, if you will tell me so--if you will confess to me that a man who looks as I do can never win your heart. I would try then to come to my senses--that is to say, to become quite hopeless. Will you do me this favor?"
Deep silence. Nevertheless she hardly seemed inclined to make such a declaration.
"You are cruel!" he continued; "I am neither to live nor die. But of what account am I? If I could believe that you would be happy--O Fanny, I would really suppress my own feelings and call the convent a paradise in which you lived and were content. But I shudder to think that you may regret what you have done when it is too late; that then even a life by the side of such an ugly, insignificant, unknown man as I am, who loves you more than himself and would do everything for you, and who finds his whole world in you--"
He raised his voice so loud as he said this that she looked up in affright, and made a beseeching sign for him to calm himself. In doing this, she involuntarily moved a little nearer to him.
"For Heaven's sake!" she stammered, "what are you doing? Pray--pray leave me. It can never, it must never be!--never, never! A secret, that I dare not tell to any one, not even in the--"
"In the confessional," she was about to add. Suddenly she started back, in alarm at what she had already said, and bowed her face down upon her book again.
"This miserable, faint-hearted, wretched world of shopkeepers!" raved Rosenbusch, on his stool over opposite. "Can there still be bold and manly deeds? O Nanny! if it only were as it once was, I would come spurring up to your father's castle some fine night on my gallant charger. You would let down a rope-ladder from the donjon-window, and would swing yourself up behind me on my horse--and away we would go into the wide, wide world! But nowadays--"
"Hm! nowadays we have railroads," she murmured, slyly.
"Girl!" he cried, in a sepulchral voice, "are you really in earnest? You would--you have the courage? O dearest Nanny of my heart! If I should elope with you, you would love me so dearly that you would follow me to the end of the world--"
She shook her head. There was a sound like a suppressed giggle.
"Nonsense!" she said, "we need only go as far as Pasing. Then papa will steam by us; or we can do as another couple once did. They merely went to the top of the church of St. Peter and sat concealed there with the warden, and their people went searching about all over the country for them, while they sat there and laughed at them all."
"Nanny, love, you really will--oh, what a heavenly idea! To-morrow--if you are truly in earnest--to-morrow evening at this time--"
This time she actually laughed out loud, but she held her handkerchief before her face.
"Oh, stop!" she said, "I was only joking! It is absurd to talk of such a thing! Mother would worry herself to death, and besides--but we must go; Fanny has risen already."
She put her book up near her face, so as to pray as quickly as possible. But he, burning with his adventurous spirit, and encouraged by the darkness of the place, quickly whispered to her:
"And you will send me away in this fashion? Not a single stolen--oh, Nanny dear, you would be doing a good deed--a kiss, in all honor!"
She seemed to have suddenly become deaf, so motionless did she kneel there, with her eyes tightly closed. At last, however, she made a movement as though she would stand up. In doing so, her little book slipped from the slanting rack and fell between her and her chivalrous neighbor. She stooped down hastily to pick it up, and, as he could not help doing likewise, nothing was more natural than that their faces should approach near enough, there in the darkness, for him to impress a hasty kiss on the girl's round cheek. She did not even seem to be conscious of what had occurred.
"Thank you," she whispered as she rose up again, holding the book he had officiously handed her. "Goodnight--but you mustn't follow us!"
She said this in a tone which made it very doubtful whether she meant it seriously. At the same time she rose from the stool and hurried to her sister, who stood waiting for her, with downcast eyes, near the holy-water basin.
The two slim figures reverently bent the knee before the principal altar, sprinkled themselves again with the holy-water, and left the little church in the same manner as they had come, deeply veiled and carrying their prayer-books before them in their hands.
Five minutes after, Rosenbusch might have been seen stepping out of the porch, arm-in-arm with the actor. The battle-painter threw the only sixpence he had about him into a lame beggar's hat.
"Holy Mother!" he cried, "life is splendid, after all, in spite of leather-glove-makers."
"Where shall we go?" asked his gloomy friend, whose spirits had been completely crushed by the "secret" of his sweetheart.
"To the tower of St. Peter's, noble Roscius! I must get acquainted with the warden this very evening, and take a look at the arrangement of the place. One can never know what devilish queer adventures one may encounter, when it would be very useful to have such high friends and patrons."
CHAPTER V.
Early on the morning following their nocturnal encounter, Felix sought out the lieutenant; he could not rest without trying to find out whether it was not an illusion of his senses which made him think he saw Irene's uncle riding at his friend's side. Schnetz lived in the top story of a dismal old house whose winding stairway was but dimly illuminated by a faint stream of light proceeding from a dingy skylight covered with dust and cobwebs. A woman, too refined-looking to be a servant, and, on the other hand, too modest in her behavior to be a housekeeper, opened the door for the strange visitor, looked at him in a frightened and confused way, and informed him in a soft, subdued voice that the lieutenant had gone out very early in the morning; when he would be back she did not know. He sometimes staid away whole days at a time; this time, besides, he had said something to her about taking a ride into the mountains. So Felix was forced to restrain his impatience. But he felt quite incapable of going to his work as usual. He lounged about the streets for hours, regardless of the heat and dust. He carefully scanned every horseman whom he met, and every carriage from which he saw a veil waving; and a girl's head, turning about with restless curiosity to see all that was going on, caused his heart to beat until he had convinced himself it was not the dreaded, and yet secretly so longed-for, face--for which he sought thus earnestly only that it might not take him too much by surprise.
On the following day he continued his aimless wanderings, at first on foot, through all the picture galleries, and in the afternoon in a drosky, in which he rattled through the Au suburb, the English Garden, and, finally, the Nymphenburg and the deer park, until his panting horse landed him, toward evening, at one of the suburban theatres; for there was still a bare possibility that the travelers would feel a desire to see the "Pfarrer von Kirchfeld," which happened to be the sensation of the hour.
All these hopes were doomed to disappointment. Half tired out and half angry with himself, he left the theatre at the close of the first act, and strolled back to his lodgings by the most unfrequented streets he could find. There he found a line from Jansen, who had been alarmed at his long absence.
"It is true," he laughed bitterly to himself, "such an old apprentice as I am ought to know the value of his time better than to cut school for two days. What is the good of it all, except to give one tired legs and a heavy head? And, if I really had found her, what then? We should have stared at one another like total strangers, and hurried out of one another's sight."
He threw himself on the sofa, and mechanically reached out his hand for one of the books that lay upon the table. As he did so he noticed that he had taken up with it a fine red hair, and this recalled his thoughts to the night when he had given up this room to Zenz.
"What a fool I was!" he muttered between his teeth. "If I had not driven the good creature away from me, perhaps I should be in better humor now, and would not have wasted these two days in such a senseless way."
Then he tried very hard to recall the figure of the poor child. But she exercised no more power over him now than she had when she was present in the body. At last sleep took compassion on his troubled soul.
The next morning he resigned himself with no little bitterness to his fate, and betook himself to Jansen's workshop. He hoped that he should be in better mood when once he had a piece of clay between his fingers.
He started back in positive alarm, therefore, when, while crossing one of the large, deserted squares, he saw the very person whom he had yesterday sought so diligently, coming out of a hotel door and advancing straight upon him. The lieutenant wore his usual suit--a close-buttoned green riding-jacket, high top-boots, and a gray hat, with a little feather, slightly tipped toward the left ear. His dry, yellow face, with its black imperial, had a most grim and defiant look, but it was instantly lighted up by a polite smile when he caught sight of his young friend of the "Paradise."
"I missed your visit day before yesterday, and have not been able to return it yet because I have been in service again. An old acquaintance has fallen upon me from the skies, a Baron N----" (he gave the name of Irene's uncle). "I got acquainted with this jolly crony some years ago in Algiers, when, just to get a smell of powder, I was fool enough to take the field against Messieurs les Arabes, although they had never done me the slightest harm in the world. The baron was trying at the time to become a lion-hunter; but he afterward preferred to offer his homage to the king of the desert from a respectful distance, and to travel back to his peaceful home with a skin bought at a bazaar, and a good store of burnooses and shawls. He was the sensible man of the two. For my part, it was a long time before I could get rid of the ugly remembrance that I had really done my hunting in earnest, and had probably deprived several of those poor devils of the pleasure of protecting their native soil against the French invaders. And now my old tent-fellow comes upon me here like a ghost--though a very portly and jolly one--and drags me about with him for days; in fact, I am coming from his hotel at this very moment."
Felix involuntarily gave a glance toward the windows of the hotel. It cost him a hard struggle to suppress all signs of his emotion.
"Does your guest live here?" he asked. "You have been visiting him so early?"
"We were going to take a ride. But I found a note from him, in which he informed me that I might take a holiday. His party has been invited by one of its noble relatives to take an excursion of several days, at which I, thank Heaven, should be quite superfluous."
"His party? Then the baron is--"
"Married? No; but almost worse than that. He has a young niece with him who is really the cause of his having come here at all. A bad story--a broken engagement, great surmising and gossiping about it in the little capital--in short, the health of the Fräulein demanded a change of air, and she insisted upon going off to Italy for a year. My old comrade, who remained a bachelor because he feared the claws of a lioness less than the slipper of a pretty wife--well, he simply jumped from the frying-pan into the fire. This young niece of his rules him with her little finger. The consequence was that the trunks immediately had to be packed for Italy. But, while here, their noble relatives succeeded in frightening them so about the Italian summers and the cholera, that they have decided to wait until the worst of the season is over, spending part of the time here in the city and part in the mountains. You will perceive, my dear friend, what a charming prospect this is for me."
"Is the young Fräulein so unamiable that your 'service' is such a hard task?" Felix remarked, with an attempt at lightness. At the same time he looked abstractedly away from the lieutenant, as if he merely continued the topic from politeness.
"Look here!" continued Schnetz, with his peculiar, dry chuckle. "If you like, I'll introduce you to the young lady, and resign all my rights. You will then have an opportunity to become acquainted with the sweetness of such service, and will perhaps make out better than I, who certainly have not succeeded in winning my way to favor. This proud little person--provided, by-the-way, with a pair of eyes that are equally well fitted to rule, to be gracious, and to condemn one forever--has unfortunately never felt a strong hand over her. The consequence is, she has a way of always setting up her own wishes on every subject, among others in regard to this unfortunate engagement. She appears to have made it so hot for the good youth who had the courage to take up with her, that at last he couldn't stand it any longer. It is very probable that she was sorry for this at heart, and so at the present moment she is in a decidedly irritable and discontented mood, and it is dangerous to touch her without gloves. Unfortunately I neglected to use this consideration; and, as a consequence, we stand on a most charming war-footing toward one another."
He struck his boot impatiently with his riding-whip, put his left arm through his young companion's right, and, striding rapidly forward with his long legs, growled out:
"It's enough to drive a man wild when he sees how God's images are disfigured--whether by saints or devils, it's all the same. Either confined by strait-lacing or by nuns' robes, or else décolletées to the very waist. Believe me, my dear fellow, as far as the education of the women of the upper classes is concerned, we are not much farther advanced to-day than we were in the darkest middle ages, when a brothel stood next door to a church. At least, we, down here in our envied South, are not; though, to be sure, this Northern blood--"
"A North German?"
"Hum! North or middle German!--upon that point she is positively fiendish! In the very first hour of our meeting, this Fräulein asked me what sort of society we had here--of course, the aristocratic society, as it loves to call itself; for a mere crowd of human beings, without the forms of etiquette, can never be regarded as human society. I replied quietly that the so-called good society here was the worst one could possibly wish for, and that it was only in the so-called bad society that I had come across a few good comrades here and there, with whom there was such a thing as living. Whereupon the little princess looked at me as much as to say that she should never have supposed, from my dress--which was anything but suited to the salon--that my exclusion from polite society was otherwise than involuntary. But I, pretending not to notice this, proceeded to explain to her at length the reasons which caused me to be disgusted with the crême of our city; the strange odor of their salons--a mixture of patchouli, incense, and the stable--their very doubtful French, and their undoubtedly worse German; their almost sublime ignorance of all that is generally considered to belong to education; and that naïve lack of knowledge in moral matters, which is generally to be found only in convents, and which can only be properly fostered by an ecclesiastical society and sanctioned by sly father confessors. Your nobles in the North, so far as I have known them--well, I needn't tell you about the clay of which they are made. No matter what hard-mouthed hobbies they ride in regard to affairs of church and state, they nevertheless hold fast to noblesse oblige; and then, too, you are very likely to find, in the castles of Pomerania and the Mark, the Bible and the hymn-book side by side with Ranke's 'History of the Popes' and Macaulay's 'History of England.' With us, on the other hand--to be sure, though, Paul de Kock and the 'Seeress of Prevorst' are also classics, and do not stand on the 'Index Expurgatorius.' I notice that you are thinking to yourself how much less jolly, and more discontented and bristling, I am to-day than I was that night in 'Paradise.' You see, my good fellow, you got acquainted with me then in one of my holiday humors, that come over me only once a month; and, to-day, you see my old Adam with his every-day face. If no one else has told you this, to give you due warning about me, I must confess it myself--since I left the service I have really had no occupation but to scoff and grumble. It is true, we live at a time when every honest fellow will have his hands full if he only conscientiously improves every opportunity to do this. But you know this goes very badly with our celebrated South German good-nature; all the worse if the one who scolds happens to be in the right. It is because of this that I have grown old in my lieutenancy; for I could not keep my mouth shut even about our military shortcomings, and at last succeeded in bolting every door to advancement so tightly against me, that I preferred to leave the beaten track of a military career altogether. Wouldn't even the blessed Thersites have been forced to resign if he had served as first lieutenant under the generals Achilles or Diomedes? And yet, those times were far simpler than ours! So, now, I go on grumbling without hinderance, and without caring whether any notice is taken of it or not. The wheat of the Philistines is sown too thick, and thrives too well, for it to be hurt by the few tares that grow among it. Still, it does me some good; in the first place, because it purges me of my gall before it mixes with my blood and attacks my vitals; and then because it makes me more and more hated by good society, and avoided by persons of my own rank. You don't know what a Robinson-Crusoe-like existence I lead; in the midst of the city I am as solitary as Saint Anthony in his cave; yes, even more lonely, for I suffer no temptations. Won't you take a look at my hermitage? Here we are at the door."
They had arrived at the old house with which Felix had already made acquaintance. He felt very little disposition to mount the stairs again. While his companion had been running on in this odd, bitter way, his mind had been occupied by one single thought. "She is here! You need only wish it, and you can see her to-morrow!" Nevertheless, he could not well refuse Schnetz's polite invitation; and so he followed him up into his fourth-story quarters.