There remained, therefore, no other conclusion at which it was possible for a rational person to arrive who weighed the circumstances than that the Countess had been murdered.
The Magisterial Court of the city of Darmstadt had attempted to hush-up the case. The German press took it up. It excited great interest and indignation throughout the country. It was intimated pretty pointedly that the case had been scandalously slurred over, because of the rank of the Count and the intimate relation in which he stood to the royal family. The papers did not shrink from more than insinuating that this was a case of murder, and that the murderer was the husband of the unfortunate woman. Some suspicion that this was so seems to have crossed the minds of the servants of the house. They recollected his dilatoriness in entering the rooms of the Countess; the time that was protracted in idle sending for keys, and trying key after key, when a kick of the foot or a blow of the hammer would have sufficed to give admission to the room where she lay. It was well known that the couple did not live on the best terms. To maintain appearances before the world, they dined and occasionally supped together. They rarely met alone, and when they did fell into dispute, and high words passed which the servants heard.
The Countess was mean and miserly, she grudged allowing her husband any of her money. She had, however, made her will the year before, leaving all her large fortune to her husband for life. Consequently her death released him from domestic and pecuniary annoyances. On the morning after the death he sent for the agent of the insurance company with whom the furniture and other effects were insured and made his claim. He claimed, in addition to the value of the furniture destroyed, the worth of a necklace of diamonds and pearls which had been so injured by the fire that it had lost the greater part of its value. The pearls were quite spoiled, and the diamonds reduced in worth by a half. The agent refused this claim, as he contended that the jewelry was not included in the insurance, and the Count abstained from pressing it.
To the Count the situation became at length intolerable. He perceived a decline of cordiality in his reception at Court, his friends grew cold, and acquaintances cut him. He must clear himself of the charge which now weighed on him. The death of the Countess had occurred on June 13, 1847. On October 6, that is four months later, Count Goerlitz appeared before the Grand-Ducal Criminal Court of Darmstadt, and produced a bundle of German newspapers charging him with having murdered his wife, and set fire to the room to conceal the evidence of his crime. He therefore asked to have the case re-opened, and the witnesses re-examined. Nothing followed. The Court hesitated to take up the case again, and throw discredit on the magistrates' decision in June. Again, on October 16, the Count renewed his request, and desired, if this were refused, that he and his solicitor might be allowed access to the minutes of the examination, that they might be enabled to take decided measures for the clearing of the Count's character, and the chastisement of those who charged him with an atrocious crime. On October 21, he received a reply, "that his request could not be granted, unless he produced such additional evidence as would show the Court that the former examination was defective."
On October 25, the Count laid a mass of evidence before the Court which, he contended, would materially modify, if not absolutely upset the conclusion arrived at by the previous investigation.
Then, at last, consent was given; but proceedings did not begin till November, and dragged on till the end of October in the following year, when a new law of criminal trial having been passed in the grand-duchy, the whole of what had gone before became invalid, save as preliminary investigation, and it was not till March 4, 1850—that is, not till three years after the death of the Countess—that the case was thoroughly sifted and settled. Before the promulgation of the law of October, 1848, all trials were private, then trial by jury, and in public, was introduced.
However, something had been done. In August 1848—that is, over a year after the burial of the Countess—the body was exhumed and submitted to examination. Two facts were then revealed. The skull of the Countess had been fractured by some blunt instrument; and she had been strangled. The condition in which the tongue had been found when the body was first discovered had pointed to strangulation, the state of the jaws when exhumed proved it.
So much, then, was made probable. A murderer had entered the room, struck the Countess on the head, and when that did not kill her, he had throttled her. Then, apparently, so it was argued, he had burnt the body, and next, before it was more than half consumed, had placed it near the secretaire, and, finally, had set fire to the secretaire.
He had set fire to the writing-desk to lead to the supposition that the Countess had set fire to herself whilst writing at it; and this was the first conclusion formed.
That a struggle had taken place appeared from several circumstances. The bell-rope was torn down. Probably no servant had been in the house that Sunday evening when the bell rang desperately for aid. The seat flung over seemed to point to her having been surprised at the desk. One shoe was in the boudoir. The struggle had been continued as she fled from the sitting-room into the inner apartment.
Now, only, were the fire-marks on the divan and sofa explicable. The Countess had taken refuge first on one, then on the other, after having been wounded, and her blood had stained them. The murderer had burnt out the marks of blood.
She had fled from the sitting-room to the boudoir, and thence had hoped to escape through the next door into a corner room, but the door of that room was locked.
The next point to be determined was, where had her body been burnt.
In the sitting-room, the boudoir, and a locked corner room were stoves. The walls of these rooms met, and in the angles were the stoves. They all communicated with one chimney. They were all heated from an opening in the anteroom, marked a, which closed with an iron door, and was covered with tapestry. The opening was large enough for a human being to be thrust through, and the fire-chamber amply large enough also for its consumption.
Much time had passed since a serious examination was begun, and it was too late to think of finding evidence of the burning of the body in this place. The stoves had been used since, each winter. However, some new and surprising evidence did come to light. At five minutes past eight on the evening that the mysterious death took place, Colonel von Stockhausen was on the opposite side of the street talking to a lady, when his attention was arrested by a dense black smoke issuing suddenly from the chimney of the Count Goerlitz' palace. He continued looking at the column of smoke whilst conversing with the lady, uncertain whether the chimney were on fire or not, and whether he ought to give the alarm. When the lady left him, after about ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, he saw that smoke ceased to issue from the chimney. He accordingly went his way without giving notice of the smoke.
So far every piece of evidence went to show that the Countess had been murdered. The conclusion now arrived at was this: she had been struck on the head, chased from room to room bleeding, had been caught, strangled, then thrust into the fire-chamber of the stove over a fire which only half consumed her; taken out again and laid before the secretaire, and the secretaire deliberately set fire to, and all the blood-marks obliterated by fire. That something of this kind had taken place was evident. Who had done it was not so clear. The efforts of the Count to clear himself had established the fact that his wife was murdered, but did not establish his innocence.
Suddenly—the case assumed a new aspect, through an incident wholly unexpected and extraordinary.
The result of inquiry into the case of the death of the Countess Goerlitz was, that the decision that she had come to her end by accident, given by the city magistrates, was upset, and it was made abundantly clear that she had been murdered. By whom murdered was not so clear.
Inquiry carried the conclusion still further. She had been robbed as well as murdered.
We have already described the writing-desk of the Countess. There were drawers below the flap, and other smaller drawers concealed by it when closed. In the smaller drawers she kept her letters, her bills, her vouchers for investments, and her jewelry. Among the latter was the pearl and diamond necklace, which she desired by her will might be sold, and the money given to a charitable institution. The necklace was indeed discovered seriously injured; but what had become of her bracelets, brooches, rings, her other necklets, her earrings? She had also a chain of pearls, which was nowhere to be found. All these articles were gone. No trace of them had been found in the cinders under the secretaire; moreover, the drawers in which she preserved them were not among those burnt through. In the first excitement and bewilderment caused by her death, the Count had not observed the loss, and the magistrates had not thought fit to inquire whether any robbery had been committed.
A very important fact was now determined. The Countess had been robbed, and murdered, probably for the sake of her jewels. Consequently the murderer was not likely to be the Count.
When the case was re-opened, at Count Goerlitz's repeated demand, an "Inquirent" was appointed by the Count to examine the case—that is, an official investigator of all the circumstances; and on November 2, 1847, in the morning, notice was given to the Count that the "Inquirent" would visit his mansion on the morrow and examine both the scene of the murder and the servants. The Count at once convoked his domestics and bade them be in the house next day, ready for examination.
That same afternoon the cook, Margaret Eyrich by name, was engaged in the kitchen preparing dinner for the master, who dined at 4 P.M. At three o'clock the servant-man, John Stauff, came into the kitchen and told the cook that her master wanted a fire lit in one of the upper rooms. She refused to go because she was busy at the stove. Stauff remained a quarter of an hour there talking to her. Then he said it was high time for him to lay the table for dinner, a remark to which she gave an assent, wondering in her own mind why he had delayed so long. He took up a soup dish, observed that it was not quite clean, and asked her to wash it. She was then engaged on some sauce over the fire.
"I will wash it, if you will stir the sauce," she said. "If I leave the pan, the sauce will be burnt."
Stauff consented, and she went with the dish to the sink. Whilst thus engaged, she turned her head, and was surprised to see that Stauff had a small phial in his hand, and was pouring its contents into the sauce.
She asked him what he was about; he denied having done anything, and the woman, with great prudence, said nothing further, so as not to let him think that her suspicions were aroused. Directly, however, that he had left the kitchen, she examined the sauce, saw it was discoloured, and on trying it, that the taste was unpleasant. She called in the coachman and the housekeeper. On consultation they decided that this matter must be further investigated. The housekeeper took charge of the sauce, and carried it to Dr. Stegmayer, the family physician, who at once said that verdigris had been mixed with it, and desired that the police should be communicated with. This was done, the sauce was analysed, and found to contain 15½ grains of verdigris, enough to poison a man. Thereupon Stauff was arrested.
We see now that an attempt had been made on the life of the Count, on the day on which he had announced that an official inquiry into the murder was to be made in his house and among his domestics.
Stauff, then, was apparently desirous of putting the Count out of the way before that inquiry was made. At this very time a terrible tragedy had occurred in France, and was in all the papers. The Duke of Praslin had murdered his wife, and when he was about to be arrested, the duke had poisoned himself.
Did Stauff wish that the Count should be found poisoned that night, in order that the public might come to the conclusion he had committed suicide to escape arrest? It would seem so.
John Stauff's arrest took place on November 3, 1847, four months and a half after the death of the Countess. He was, however, only arrested on a charge of attempting to poison the Count, and the further charge of having murdered the Countess was not brought against him till August 28, 1848. The body of the murdered woman, it will be remembered, was not exhumed and examined till August 11, 1848—eight months after the re-opening of the investigation! It is really wonderful that the mystery should have been cleared and the Count's character satisfactorily vindicated, with such dilatoriness of proceeding. One more instance of the stupid way in which the whole thing was managed. Although John Stauff was charged with the attempt to poison on November 3, 1847, he was not questioned on the charge till January 10, 1849, that is, till he had been fourteen months in prison.
It will be remembered that the bell-rope in the Countess's parlour was torn down. It would suggest itself to the meanest capacity that here was a point of departure for inquiry. If the bell had been torn down, it must have pealed its summons for help through the house. Who was in the house at the time? If anyone was, why did he not answer the appeal? Inconceivable was the neglect of the magistrates of Darmstadt in the first examination—they did not inquire. Only several months later was this matter subjected to investigation.
In the house lived the Count and Countess, the cook, who also acted as chambermaid to the Countess, Schiller, the valet to the Count, Schämbs, the coachman, and the Countess's own servant-man, John Stauff. Of these Schiller and Schämbs did not sleep in the house.
June 13, the day of the murder, was a Sunday. The Count went as usual to the grand-ducal palace in his coach at 3 P.M. The coachman drove him; Stauff sat on the box beside the coachman. They left the Count at the palace and returned home. They were ordered to return to the palace to fetch him at 6 P.M. On Sundays, the Count usually spent his day in his own suite of apartments, and the Countess in hers. On the morning in question she had come downstairs to her husband with a bundle of coupons which she wanted him to cash for her on the morrow. He managed her fortune for her. The sum was small, only £30. At 2 P.M. she went to the kitchen to tell the cook she might go out for the afternoon, as she would not be wanted, and that she must return by 9 P.M.
At three o'clock the cook left. The cook saw and spoke to her as she left. The Countess was then partially undressed, and the cook supposed she was changing her clothes. Shortly after this, Schiller, the Count's valet, saw and spoke with her. She was then upstairs in the laundry arranging the linen for the mangle. She was then in her morning cotton dress. Consequently she had not dressed herself to go out, as the cook supposed. At the same time the carriage left the court of the house for the palace. That was the last seen of her alive, except by John Stauff, and, if he was not the murderer, by one other.
About a quarter past three the coach returned with Schämbs and Stauff on the box. The Count had been left at the palace. The coachman took out his horses, without unharnessing them, and left for his own house, at half-past three, to remain there till 5 o'clock, when he must return, put the horses in, and drive back to the palace to fetch the Count. A quarter of an hour after the coachman left, Schiller went out for a walk with his little boy.
Consequently—none were in the house but the Countess and Stauff, and Stauff knew that the house was clear till 5 o'clock, when Schämbs would return to the stables. What happened during that time?
At a quarter past four, the wife of Schiller came to the house with a little child, and a stocking she was knitting. She wanted to know if her husband had gone with the boy to Eberstadt, a place about four miles distant. She went to the back-door. It was not fastened, but on being opened rang a bell, like a shop door. Near it were two rooms, one occupied by Schiller, the other by Stauff. The wife went into her husband's room and found it empty. Then she went into that of Stauff. It also was empty. She returned into the entrance hall and listened. Everything was still in the house. She stood there some little while knitting and listening. Presently she heard steps descending the backstairs, and saw Stauff, with an apron about him, and a duster in his hand. She asked him if her husband had gone to Eberstadt, and he said that he had. Then she left the house. Stauff, however, called to her from the window to hold up the child to him, to kiss. She did so, and then departed.
Shortly after five, Schämbs returned to the stable, put in the horses, and drove to the palace without seeing Stauff. He thought nothing of this, as Stauff usually followed on foot, in time to open the coach door for the Count. On this occasion, Stauff appeared at his post in livery, at a quarter to six. At half-past six both returned with their master to the house in Neckar Street.
Accordingly, from half-past three to a quarter past four, and from half-past four to half-past five, Stauff was alone in the house with the Countess. But then, from a quarter to five to half-past five she was quite alone, and it was possible that the murder was committed at that time. The Count, it will be remembered, on his return, went upstairs and knocked at the door of the Countess' apartments, without meeting with a response. Probably, therefore, she was then dead.
At seven o'clock the coachman went away, and Stauff helped the Count to take off his court dining dress, and put on a light suit. He was with him till half-past seven, when the Count went out for a walk. The Count returned at half-past eight; during an hour, therefore, Stauff was alone in the house with the Countess, or—her corpse.
What occurred during that hour? Here two independent pieces of evidence come in to assist us in determining what took place. At five minutes past eight, Colonel von Stockhausen had seen the column of black smoke issue from the chimney of the house; it ascended, he said, some fifteen feet above the chimney, and was so dense that it riveted his attention whilst he was talking to a lady.
At about a quarter-past eight the smoke ceased.
The reader may remember that the window of the inner boudoir did not look into the Neckar Street, but into a small side street. Immediately opposite lived a widow lady named Kekule. On the evening in question, her daughter, Augusta, a girl of eighteen, came in from a walk, and went upstairs to the room the window of which was exactly opposite, though at a somewhat higher level than the window of the boudoir. Looking out of her window, Augusta Kekule saw to her astonishment a flickering light like a lambent flame in the boudoir. A blind was down, so that she could see nothing distinctly. She was, however, alarmed, and called her brother Augustus, aged twenty years, and both watched the flames flashing in the room. They called their mother also, and all three saw it flare up high, then decrease, and go out. The time was 8.15. On examination of the spot, it was seen that the window of Miss Kekule commanded the corner of the boudoir, where was the divan partly burnt through in several places.
What was the meaning of these two appearances, the smoke and the flame? Apparently, from half-past seven to half-past eight the murderer was engaged in burning the body, and in effacing with fire the blood-stains on the sofas. During this time John Stauff was in the house, and, beside the Countess, alive or dead, John Stauff only.
Stauff was now subjected to examination. He was required to account for his time on the afternoon and evening of Sunday, June 13.
He said, that after his return from the palace, that is, about ten minutes past three, he went into his room on the basement, and ate bread and cheese. When told that the wife of Schiller stated she had seen him come downstairs, he admitted that he had run upstairs to fetch a duster, to brush away the bread crumbs from the table at which he had eaten. After the woman left, according to his own account, he remained in his room below till five o'clock, when the Countess came to the head of the stairs and called him. He went up and found her on the topmost landing; she went into the laundry, and he stood in the door whilst she spoke to him, and gave him some orders for the butcher and baker. She wore, he said, a black stuff gown. Whilst he was talking to her, Schämbs drove away to fetch the Count. He gave a correct account of what followed, up to the departure of the Count on his walk. After that, he said, he had written a letter to his sweetheart, and at eight went out to get his supper at an outdoor restaurant where he remained till half-past nine. He was unable to produce evidence of anyone who had seen him and spoken to him there; but, of course, much cannot be made of this, owing to the distance of time at which the evidence was taken from the event of the murder. According to his account, therefore, no one was in the house at the time when the smoke rose from the chimney, and the flame was seen in the boudoir.
If we sum up the points determined concerning the murder of the Countess, we shall see how heavily the evidence told against Stauff.
She had been attacked in her room, and after a desperate struggle, which went on in both parlour and boudoir, she had been killed.
Her secretaire had been robbed.
Her body had been burnt.
The blood-stains had been effaced by fire.
The secretaire had been set fire to; and, apparently, the body removed from where it had been partially consumed, and placed near it.
Now all this must have taken time. It could only be done by one who knew that he had time in which to effect it undisturbed.
John Stauff was at two separate times, in the afternoon and evening, alone in the house for an hour, knowing that during that time he would be undisturbed.
If his account were true, the murder must have been committed during his brief absence with the coach, and the burning of the body, and setting fire to the room, done when he went out to get his supper. But—how could the murderer suppose he would leave the house open and unprotected at eight o'clock? Was it likely that a murderer and robber, after having killed the Countess and taken her jewels at six o'clock, would hang about till eight, waiting the chance of getting back to the scene of his crime unobserved, to attempt to disguise it? not knowing, moreover, how much time he would have for effecting his purpose?
It was possible that this had been done, but it was not probable.
Evidence was forthcoming from a new quarter that served to establish the guilt of Stauff.
On October 6, 1847, an oilman, Henry Stauff, in Oberohmen, in Hesse Cassel, was arrested, because he was found to be disposing of several articles of jewelry, without being able to give a satisfactory account of where he got them. The jewelry consisted of a lump of molten gold, and some brooches, bracelets and rings.
Henry Stauff had been a whitesmith in his youth, then he became a carrier, but in the last few years, since the death of his wife, he had sold knives, and been a knife-grinder. He was very poor, and had been unable to pay his rates. In July of 1847, however, his affairs seemed to have mended; he wore a silver watch, and took out a licence to deal in oil and seeds. When he applied for the patent, the burgomaster was surprised, and asked him how he could get stock to set up business, in his state of poverty. Thereupon, Henry Stauff opened his purse and showed that it contained a good amount of silver, and—with the coins was a gold ring with, apparently, a precious stone in it.
The cause of his arrest was his offering the lump of gold to a silversmith in Cassel. It looked so much as if it was the melting up of jewelry, that the smith communicated with the police. On his arrest, Henry Stauff said he was the father of four children, two sons and two daughters; that his sons, one of whom was in the army, had sent him money, that his daughter in America had given him the jewelry, and that the gold he had had by him for several years, it had been given him by a widow, who was dead. The silver watch he had bought in Frankfort. Henry Stauff had a daughter at home, name Anna Margaretta, who often received letters from Darmstadt. One of these letters had not been stamped, and as she declined to pay double for it, it lay in the post-office till opened to be returned. Then it was found to be dated September 29, 1847, and to be from her brother, John Stauff. It simply contained an inclosure to her father; this was opened; it contained an angry remonstrance with him for not having done what he was required, and sent the money at once to the writer.
Was it possible that this had reference to the disposal of the jewelry?
On July 7, three weeks after the death of the Countess, Henry Stauff was at Darmstadt, where one son, Jacob, was in the army; the other, John, was in service with the Goerlitz family.
This led the magistrates in Cassel to communicate with those in Darmstadt. On November 10, John Stauff was questioned with reference to his father. He said he had often sent him money. He was shown the jewelry, and asked if he recognised it. He denied having ever seen it, and having sent it to his father.
The jewelry was shown to Count Goerlitz, and he immediately identified it as having belonged to his wife. A former lady's-maid of the Countess also identified the articles. The Count, and a maid, asserted that these articles had always been kept by the deceased lady in the small upper drawers of her secretaire. The Countess was vain and miserly, and often looked over her jewelry. She would, certainly, have missed her things had they been stolen before June 13.
The articles had not been stolen since, found among the ashes, and carried off surreptitiously, for they showed no trace of fire.
Here we must again remark on the extraordinary character of the proceedings in this case. The articles were identified and shown to John Stauff on November 10, 1847, but it was not till ten months after, on August 28, 1848, that he was told that he was suspected of the murder of the Countess, and of having robbed her of these ornaments. Another of the eccentricities of the administration of justice in Darmstadt consisted in allowing the father Henry, and his son John, to have free private communication with each other, whilst the latter was in prison, and thus allowing them to concoct together a plausible account of their conduct, with which, however, we need not trouble ourselves.
On September 1, 1848, on the fourth day after Stauff knew that he was charged with the murder of the Countess, he asked to make his statement of what really took place. This was the account he gave. It will be seen that, from the moment he knew the charge of murder was brought against him, he altered his defence.
He said, "On June 20, 1847," (that is, a week after the murder), "about ten o'clock in the evening, after the Count had partaken of his supper and undressed, he brought me a box containing jewelry, and told me he would give it to me, as I was so poor, and that it would place my father and me in comfortable circumstances. I then told the Count that I did not know what to do with these jewels, whereupon he exhorted me to send them to my father, and get him to dispose of them. He told me that he required me solemnly to swear that I would not tell anyone about the jewels. I hid the box in a stocking and concealed it in some bushes on the Bessungen road. Later I told my brother Jacob where they were, and bade him give them to my father on his visit to Darmstadt."
When Stauff was asked what reason he could assign for the Count giving him the jewels, he said that the Count saw that he, John Stauff, suspected him of the murder, and he named several circumstances, such as observing blood on the Count's handkerchief on the evening of the murder, which had led him to believe that the Count was guilty, and the Count was aware of his suspicions.
On March 4, 1850, began the trial of John Stauff for the murder of the Countess, for robbery, for arson, and for attempt to poison the Count.
At the same time his father, Henry Stauff, and his brother, Jacob Stauff, were tried for concealment of stolen goods. The trial came to an end on April 11. As many as 118 witnesses were heard; among these was the Count Goerlitz, as to whose innocence no further doubts were entertained.
John Stauff was at that time aged twenty-six, he was therefore twenty-four years old at the time of the murder. He had been at school at Oberohmen, where he had shown himself an apt and intelligent scholar. In 1844 he had entered the grand-ducal army, and in May 1846 had become servant in the Goerlitz house, as footman to the Countess. In his regiment he had behaved well; he had been accounted an excellent servant, and both his master and mistress placed confidence in him. Curiously enough, in the autumn of 1846, he had expressed a wish to a chambermaid of the Countess "that both the Countess and her pack of jewels, bracelets and all, might be burnt in one heap."
When the maid heard of the death of the Countess in the following year, "Ah!" she said, "now Stauff's wish has been fulfilled to the letter."
He was fond of talking of religion, and had the character among his fellow-servants of being pious. He was, however, deep in debt, and associated with women of bad character. Throughout the trial he maintained his composure, his lips closed, his colour pale, without token of agitation. But the man who could have stood by without showing emotion at the opening of the coffin of his mistress, at the sight of the half-burnt, half-decomposed remains of his victim, must have had powers of self-control of no ordinary description. During the trial he seemed determined to show that he was a man of some culture; he exhibited ease of manner and courtesy towards judges, jury, and lawyers. He never interrupted a witness, and when he questioned them, did so with intelligence and moderation. He often looked at the public, especially the women, who attended in great numbers, watching the effect of the evidence on their minds. When, as now and then happened, some ludicrous incident occurred, he laughed over it as heartily as the most innocent looker-on.
The jury unanimously found him "guilty" on every count. They unanimously gave a verdict of "guilty" against his father and brother. Henry Stauff was sentenced to six months' imprisonment; Jacob Stauff to detention for three months, and John to imprisonment for life. At that time capital punishment could not be inflicted in Hesse.
On June 3, he was taken to the convict prison of Marienschloss. On July 1, he appealed to the Grand-Duke to give him a free pardon, as he was innocent of the crimes for which he was sentenced. The appeal was rejected. Then he professed his intention of making full confession. He asked to see the Count. He professed himself a broken-hearted penitent, desirous of undoing, by a sincere confession, as much of the evil as was possible.
We will give his confession in his own words.
"When, at five o'clock, I went to announce to the Countess that I was about to go to the palace, I found both the glass door of the ante-room, and that into the sitting-room, open, and I walked in through them. I did not find the Countess in her parlour, of which the curtains were drawn. Nor was she in her boudoir. I saw the door into the little corner room ajar, so I presumed she was in there. The flap of her desk was down, so that I saw the little drawers, in which I knew she kept her valuables, accessible to my hand. Opportunity makes the thief. I was unable to resist the temptation to enrich myself by these precious articles. I opened one of the drawers, took out a gold bracelet, one of gold filigree, two of bronze, a pair of gold ear-rings, a gold brooch, and a triple chain of beads or Roman pearls; and pocketed these articles, which my father afterwards had, and, for the most part, melted up.
"Most of these articles were in their cases. At that moment the Countess appeared on the threshold of her boudoir and rushed towards me. I do not remember what she exclaimed; fear for the consequences, and anxiety to prevent the Countess from making a noise and calling assistance, and thereby obtaining my arrest, prevailed in my mind, and I thought only how I might save myself. I grasped her by the neck, and pressed my thumbs into her throat. She struggled desperately. I was obliged to use all my strength to hold her. After a wrestle of between five and seven minutes, her eyes closed, her face became purple, and I felt her limbs relax.
"When I saw she was dead I was overcome with terror. I let the body fall, whereby the head struck the corner of the left side of the secretaire, and this made a wound which began to bleed. Then I ran and locked both the doors, hid what I had taken in my bed, and left the house. On my way to the palace, I stepped into Frey's tavern and drank three glasses of wine. I was afraid I should arrive too late at the palace, where I appeared, however, at half-past five. The Count did not return till half-past six, as dinner that day lasted rather longer than usual.
"When the Count went upstairs to see his wife and take her something good he had brought away with him from table, I was not uneasy at all, for I knew that he would knock and come away if he met with no response. So he did. He came down without being discomposed, and remarked that he fancied the Countess had gone out. At half-past seven he left the house. In the mean time I had been considering what to do, and had formed my plan. Now my opportunity had arrived, and I hastened to put it into execution. My plan was to efface every trace of my deed by fire, and to commit suicide if interrupted.
"As the weather was chilly, the Count had some fire in his stove. I fetched the still glowing charcoal, collected splinters of firwood and other combustibles, and matches, and went upstairs with them. Only the wine sustained me through what I carried out. I took up the body. I put a chair before the open desk, seated the corpse on it, placed one arm on the desk, laid the head on the arm, so that the body reposed in a position of sleep, leaning on the flap of the desk. I threw the red hot charcoal down under the head, heaped matches, paper, and wood splinters over them; took one of the blazing bits of wood and threw it on the divan in the boudoir; locked both doors, and flung away the keys.
"Then I went to my own room and lighted a fire in the stove, and put the jewel cases on the fire. The fire would not burn well, and thick smoke came into the room. Then I saw that the damper was closed. I opened that, and the smoke flew up the chimney; this is what Colonel von Stockhausen saw. There were a lot of empty match-boxes also in the stove, and these burnt with the rest."
Such was the confession of Stauff. How far true, it is impossible to say. He said nothing about the bell-pull being torn down, nothing about the holes burnt in the sofa of the sitting-room. According to the opinion of some experimentalists, the way in which he pretended to have burnt the Countess would not account for the appearance of the corpse.
His object was to represent himself as the victim of an over-mastering temptation—to show that the crime was wholly unpremeditated.
This was the sole plea on which he could appeal for sympathy, and expect a relaxation of his sentence.
That sentence was relaxed.
In 1872 he obtained a free pardon from the Grand-Duke, on condition that he left the country and settled in America. Including his imprisonment before his trial, he had, therefore, undergone twenty-five years of incarceration.
When released he went to America, where he probably still is.
In the history of Selenography, John Henry Maedler holds a distinguished place. He was the very first to publish a large map of the lunar surface; and his map was a good one, very accurate, and beautifully executed, in four sheets (1834-6). For elucidation of this map he wrote a book concerning the moon, entitled "The Universal Selenography." Not content with this, he published a second map of the moon in 1837, embodying fresh discoveries. Indeed as an astronomer, Maedler was a specialist. Lord Dufferin when in Iceland met a German naturalist who had gone to that inclement island to look for one moth. It is of the nature of Teutonic scientific men not to diffuse their interests over many branches of natural history or other pursuits, but to focus them on a single point. Maedler was comparatively indifferent to the planets, cold towards the comets, and callous to the attractions of the nebulæ. On the subject of the moon, he was a sheer lunatic.
He died at Hanover in 1874 at the age of eighty, a moon gazer to the last. Indeed, he appeared before the public as the historian of that science in a work published at Brunswick, the year previous to his death. The study of astronomy, more than any other,—even than theology—detaches a man from the world and its interests. Indeed theology as a study has a tendency to ruffle a man, and make him bark and snap at his fellow men who use other telescopes than himself; it is not so with astronomy. This science exercises a soothing influence on those who make it their study, so that an Adams and a Le Verrier can simultaneously discover a Neptune without flying at each other's noses.
Astronomy is certainly an alluring science; set an astronomer before a telescope, and an overwhelming attraction draws his soul away through the tube up into heaven, and leaves his body without mundane interests. An astronomer is necessarily a mathematician, and mathematics are the hardest and most petrifying of studies. The "humane letters," as classic studies are called, draw out the human interests, they necessarily carry men among men, but mathematics draw men away from all the interests of their fellows. The last man one expects to find in love, the last man in whose life one looks for a romantic episode, is a mathematician and astronomer. But as even Cæsar nods, so an astronomer may lapse into spooning. The life of Professor Maedler does not contain much of animated interest; but it had its poetic incident. The curious story of his courtship and marriage may be related without indiscretion, now that the old Selenographer is no more.
Even the most prosaic of men have their time of poetry. The swan is said to sing only once—just before it dies. The man of business—the stockbroker, the insurance-company manager, the solicitor, banker, the ironmonger, butcher, greengrocer, postman, have all passed through a "moment," as Hegel would call it, when the soul burst through its rind of common-place and vulgar routine, sang its nightingale song, and then was hushed for ever after. It is said that there are certain flowers which take many years coming to the point of bloom, they open, exhale a flood of incense, and in an hour wither. It is so with many. Even the astronomer has his blooming time. Then, after the honeymoon, the flower withers, the song ceases, the sunshine fades, and folds of the fog of common-place settle deeper than before.
Ivan Turgenieff, the Russian novelist, says of love, "It is not an emotion, it is a malady, attacking soul and body. It is developed without rule, it cannot be reckoned with, it cannot be overreached. It lays hold of a man, without asking leave, like a fever or the cholera. It seizes on its prey as a falcon on a dove, and carries it, where it wills. There is no equality in love. The so-termed free inclination of souls towards each other is an idle dream of German professors, who have never loved. No! of two who love, one is the slave, the other is the lord, and not inaccurately have the poets told of the chains of love."
But love when it does lay hold of a man assumes some features congruent to his natural habit. It is hardly tempestuous in a phlegmatic temperament, nor is a man of sanguine nature liable to be much influenced by calculations of material advantages. That calculations should form a constituent portion of the multiform web of a mathematician's passion is what we might anticipate.
It will be interesting to see in a German professor devoted to the severest, most abstract and super-mundane of studies, the appearance, course, and dying away of the "malady" of love. We almost believe that this case is so easy of analysis that the very bacillus may be discovered.
Before, however, we come to the story of Professor Maedler's love episode, we must say a word about his previous history.
Maedler was born at Berlin on May 29th, 1794, in the very month of love, though at its extreme end. He began life as a schoolmaster, but soared in his leisure hours into a purer atmosphere than that of the schoolroom; he began to study the stars, and found them brighter and more interesting than the heads of his pupils.
In 1828 William Beer, the Berlin banker, brother of the great composer, Meyerbeer, a Jew, built a small observatory in the suburbs of Berlin. He had made the acquaintance of Maedler, they had the same love of the stars, and they became close friends.
The Beers were a gifted family, running out in different directions. Michael, a third brother, was a poet, and wrote tragedies, one or two of which occasionally reappear on the boards.
The result of the nightly star gazings was an article on Mars when in opposition, with a drawing of the surface as it appeared to Beer and Maedler, through the telescope of the former.
But Mars did not admit of much further scrutiny, it presented no more problems they were capable of solving, so they devoted themselves to the moon. A gourmand exists from dinner to dinner, that meal is the climax of his vitality, that past he lapses into inertness, indifference, quiescence. Full moon was the exciting moment of the periods in Maedler's life, which was divided, not like a gourmand's day, into periods of twenty-four hours, but into lunar months. When the moon began to show, Maedler began to live; his interest, the pulses of his life quickened as full moon approached, then declined and went to sleep when there was no lunar disc in the sky. From 1834 to 1836 he issued his great map of the moon, and so made his name. But beyond that, in the summer of 1833 he was employed by the Russian Government on a chronometrical expedition in the Baltic.
When his map came out, he was at once secured by the Prussian Government as assistant astronomer to the observatory at Berlin, recently erected. In 1840 he became a professor, and was summoned to take charge of the observatory, and lecture on astronomy, in the Russian University of Dorpat. There he spent six uneventful years. He was unmarried, indifferent to female society, and as cold as his beloved moon. He was as solitary, as far removed from the ideas of love and matrimony, as the Man in the Moon.
At last, one vacation time, he paid a long deferred visit to a friend, a Selenologist, at Gröningen, the University of the Kingdom of Hanover. Whilst smoking, drinking beer, and talking over the craters and luminous streaks in the moon, with his friend, who was also a professor, that gentleman drew his pipe from his mouth, blew a long spiral from between his lips, and then said slowly, "By the way, professor, are you aware that we have here, in this kingdom, not, indeed, in Gröningen, but in the town of Hanover, a lady, the wife of the Herr Councillor Witte, who is, like yourself, devoted to the moon; a lady, who spends entire nights on the roof of her house peering at the face of the moon through one end—the smaller—of her telescope, observing all the prominences, measuring their altitudes, and sounding all the cavities. Indeed, it is asserted that she studies the face and changes of the moon much more closely than the features and moods of her husband. Also, it is asserted, that when the moon is shining, the household duties are neglected, the dinners are bad, the maids—"
"O dinners! maids! you need not consider them; there are always dinners and maids," said the Dorpat astronomer contemptuously, "but the moon is seen so comparatively rarely. The moon must be made much of when she shows. Everything must then be sacrificed to her."
Dr. Maedler did not call the moon she, but he; however, we are writing in English, not in German, so we change the gender.
The Astronomer Royal of the University of Gröningen went on, without noticing the interruption: "Frau von Witte has spent a good deal of her husband's money in getting the largest procurable telescope, and has built an observatory for it with a dome that revolves on cannon balls, on the top of her house. Whilst Herr von Witte slumbers and snores beneath, like a Philistine, his enlightened lady is aloft, studying the moon. The Frau Councilloress has done more than observe Luna, she has done more than you and Beer together, with your maps—she has modelled it."
"Modelled it!—modelled the moon!—in what?"
"In white wax."
Professor Maedler's countenance fell. He had gained great renown, not in Germany only, but throughout Europe by his maps of the moon. Here was an unknown lady, as enthusiastic a devotee to the satellite as himself, who had surpassed him. "You see," continued the Hanoverian professor, "the idea is superb, the undertaking colossal. You have a fixed strong light, you make the wax moon to revolve on its axis, and you reproduce in the most surprising and exact manner, all the phases of the moon itself."
This was indeed an idea. Maedler looked at his hands, his fingers. Would they be capable of modelling such a globe? Hardly, he had very broad coarse hands, and thick flat fingers, like paddles. He suddenly stood up.
"What is the matter? Whither are you going?" asked his friend.
"To Hanover, to Frau Witte, to see the wax moon." No persuasion would restrain him, he was in a selenological fever, he could not sleep, he could not eat, he could not read, he must see the wax moon.
And now, pray observe the craft of Cupid. The professor was aged fifty-two. In vain had the damsels of Berlin and Dorpat set their caps at him. Not a blonde beauty of Saxon race with blue eyes had caught his fancy, not a dark Russian with large hazel eyes and thick black hair, had arrested his attention. His heart had been given to the cold, chaste Diana. It was, with him, the reverse of the tale of Endymion.
He had written a treatise on the occultation of Mars, he had described the belts of Saturn, he had even measured his waist. Venus he had neglected, and now Cupid was about to avenge the slight passed on his mother. There was but one avenue by which access might be had to the professor's heart. The God of Love knew it, and resolved to storm the citadel through this avenue. Dr. Maedler packed his trunk himself in the way in which unmarried men and abstract thinkers do pack their portmanteaus. He bundled all his clothes in together, higglety-pigglety. The only bit of prudence he showed was to put the pomatum pot into a stocking. His collars he curled up in the legs of his boots. Copies of his astronomical pamphlets for presentation, lay in layers between his shirts. Then as the trunk would not close, the Professor of Astronomy sat down heavily on it, stood up, then sharply sat down on it again, and repeated this operation, till coats, trousers, linen, pamphlets, brushes and combs had been crushed together into one cohesive mass, and so the lock would fasten.
No sooner was Dr. Maedler arrived at his inn in Hanover, and had dusted the collar of his coat, and revolved before the garçon who went over him with a clothes brush, revolved like the moon he loved, than he sallied forth in quest of the house of the Wittes. There was no mistaking it—with the domed observatory on the roof.
Dr. Maedler stood in the square, looking up at it. The sight of an observatory touched him; and now, hard and dry as he was, moisture came into his eyes, as he thought that there, on that elevated station, an admirable woman spent her nights in the contemplation of the moon. What was Moses on Pisgah, viewing the Promised Land, what was Simeon Stylites braving storm and cold, to this spectacle?
Never before had the astronomer met with one of the weaker sex who cared a button for the moon, qua moon, and not as a convenience for illumining lovers' meetings, or for an allusion in a valentine. Here was an heroic soul which surged, positively surged above the frivolities of her sex, one who aspired to be the rival of man in intelligence and love of scientific research.
Professor Maedler sent in his card, and a letter of introduction from his friend at Gröningen, and was at once admitted. He had formed an ideal picture of the Selenographic lady, tall, worn with night watching, with an arched brow, large, clear eyes. He found her a fat little woman, with a face as round and as flat as that of the moon, not by any means pale, but red as the moon in a fog.
The lady was delighted to make the acquaintance of so renowned an astronomer. She made him pretty speeches about his map, at the same time letting him understand that a map was all very well, but she knew of something better. Then she launched out into a criticism of his pamphlets on Mars and Saturn, on which, as it happened, he was then sitting. He had put a crumpled copy in each of his tail-coat pockets for an offering, and was now doubly crumpling them. Then she asked his opinion about the revolution and orbit of Biela's comet, which had been seen the preceding year. Next she carried him to Hencke's recently discovered planet, Astræa; after that she dashed away, away with him to the nebulæ, and sought to resolve them with his aid. Then down they whirled together through space to the sun, and the luminous red protuberances observable at an eclipse. Another step, and they were plunging down to earth, had reached it in safety, and were discussing Lord Rosse's recently erected telescope. It was like Dante and Beatrix, with this difference, that Maedler was not a poet, and Frau Witte was a married woman.
The Professor was uneasy. Charming as is a telescope, delightful as is the sun, fascinating as Astræa may be, still, the moon, the moon was what he had come to discuss, and wax moon what he had come to see.
So he exercised all his skill, and with great dialectic ability conducted his Beatrix away on another round. They gave the fixed stars a wide berth, dived in and out among the circling planets and planetoids without encountering one, avoided the comets, kept their feet off nebulous matter, and at last he planted his companion firmly on the moon, and when there, there he held her.
To her words of commendation of his lunar map, he replied by expressing his astonishment at her knowledge of the several craters and so-called seas. Presently Frau Witte rose with a smile, and said, "Herr Professor, I may, perhaps, be allowed to exhibit a trifle on which I have been engaged for many years:—an independent work that I have compared with, but not copied from, your excellent selenic map."
The doctor's heart fluttered; his eyes brightened; a hectic flush came into his cheeks.
Frau Witte took a key and led the way to her study, where she threw open a mahogany cupboard, and exposed to view something very much like a meat cover. This also she removed, it was composed of the finest silk stretched on a frame, and exposed to view—the wax moon.
The globe was composed of the purest white beeswax, it stood upon a steel needle that passed through it, and rested on pivots, so that the globe was held up and held firm, and could be easily made to revolve. Frau Witte closed the shutters, leaving open only one orifice through which the light could penetrate and fall on the wax ball.
The doctor raised his hands in admiration. Never had he seen anything that so delighted him. The globe's surface had been most delicately manipulated. The mountains were pinched into peaks, the hollows indented to the requisite depth, the craters were rendered with extraordinary precision, the striæ being indicated by insertions of other tinted wax. A shadow hung sombre over the mysterious Sea of Storms.
Professor Maedler returned to his hotel a prey to emotion. He inquired the address of a certain Rollmann, whom he had known in former years at Berlin, and who was now professor in the Polytechnic school at Hanover. Then he rushed off in quest of Rollmann. The Polytechnic Professor was delighted to see his friend, but disturbed at the condition of mind in which he found him.
"What has brought you to Hanover, dear Professor?" he asked.
"The moon! the moon! I have come after the moon."
"The moon! How can that be? She shines over Dorpat as surely as over our roofs in Hanover."
"I've just seen her."
"Impossible. The moon is new. Besides, it is broad daylight."
"New! of course she is new. Only made lately."
Professor Rollman was puzzled.
"The moon is certainly as old as the world, and even if we give the world so limited an age as four thousand years—"
"I was not allowed to touch her, scarcely to breathe near her," interrupted Maedler.
"My dear colleague, what is the matter with you? You are—what do you say, seen, touched, breathed on the moon? The distance of the moon from the earth is two hundred and forty thousand miles."
"Not the old moon—I mean the other."
"There is no other, that is, not another satellite to this world. I am well aware that Jupiter has four moons, two of which are smaller than the planet Mars. I know also that Mars—"
"My dear Rollman, there is another—here in Hanover."
"I give it up, I cannot understand."
"Happy Hanover to possess such an unique treasure," continued the excited Maedler, "and such a woman as Frau Witte."
"Oh! her wax moon!" said Rollmann, with a sigh of relief.
"Of what else could I speak?"
"So you have seen that. The old lady is very proud of her performance."
"She has cause to be proud of it. It is simply superb."
"And the sight of it has nearly sent you off your head!"
"Rollmann! what will become of that model? Frau Councilloress Witte will not live for ever. She is old, puffy, and red, and might have apoplexy any day. Is her husband an astronomer?"
"O dear no! he regards astronomy as as unprofitable a study as astrology. It is quite as expensive a pursuit, he says."
"Merciful heavens! Suppose she were to predecease—he would have the moon, and be unable to appreciate it. He might let it get dusty, have the craters and seas choked; perhaps the mountain-tops knocked off. He must not have it."
"It cannot be helped. The moon must take its chance."
"It must not be. She must outlive the Councillor."
"If you can manage that—well."
"But—supposing she does outlive him, she is not immortal. Some day she must die. Who will have the moon then?"
"I suppose, her daughter."
"What will the daughter do with it?"
"Melt it up for waxing the floors."
Professor Maedler uttered a cry of dismay.
"The object is one of incalculable scientific value. Has the daughter no husband, a man of intelligence, to stay her hand?"
"The daughter is unmarried. There was some talk of a theological candidate—"
"A theological candidate! An embryo pastor! Just powers! These men are all obscurantists. He will melt up the moon thinking thereby to establish the authority of Moses."
"That came to nothing. She is disengaged."
Professor Maedler paced the room. Perspiration bedewed his brow. He wiped his forehead, more drops formed. Suddenly he stood still. "Rollmann," he said, in a hollow voice, "I must—I will have that moon, even if I have to marry the daughter to secure it."
"By all means. Minna is a pleasant young lady."
"Minna! Minna! is that her name?" asked the distracted professor; then, more coolly, "I do not care a rush what her name is. I want, not her, but the moon."
"She is no longer in the bloom of early youth."
"She is an exhausted world; a globe of volcanic cinder."
"She is of real solid worth."
"Solid—she is of solid wax—white beeswax."
"If she becomes yours—"
"I will exhibit her at my lectures to the students."
"As you are so much older, some provision will have to be made in the event of your death."
"I will leave her to the Dorpat museum, with directions to the curator to keep the dust off her."
"My dear Professor Maedler, I am speaking of the young lady, you of the moon."
"Ah so! I had forgotten the incumbrance. Yes, I will marry the moon. I will carry her about with me, hug her in my arms, protect her most carefully from the fingers of the Custom House officers. I will procure an ukase from the Emperor to admit her unfingered over the frontier."
"And Minna!"
"What Minna?"
"The young lady."
"Ah so! She had slipped out of my reckoning. She shall watch the box whilst I sleep, and whilst she sleeps I will keep guard."
"Be reasonable, Maedler. Do you mean, in sober earnest, to invite Minna Witte to be your wife?"
"If I cannot get the moon any other way."
"But you have not even seen her yet."
"What does that matter? I have seen the moon."
"And you are in earnest!"
"I will have the moon."
"Then, of course, you will have to propose."
"I propose!"
"And, of course, to make love."
"I make love!"
Professor Maedler's colour died away. He stood still before his friend, his pocket-handkerchief in hand, and stared.
"I have not the remotest idea how to do it."
"You must try."
"I've had no experience. I am going on to fifty-three. As well ask me to dance on the trapeze. It is not proper. It is downright indecent."
"Then you must do without the wax moon."
"I cannot do without the wax moon."
"Then, there is no help for it, you must make love to and propose to the fair Minna."
"Friend," said the Russian-imperial-professor-of-astronomy-of-the-University-of-Dorpat, as he clasped Rollmann's hand. "You are experienced in the ways of the world. I have lived in an observatory, and associated only with fixed stars, revolving moons, and comets. Tell me how to do it, and I will obey as a lamb."
"You will have to sigh."
"O! I can do that."
"And ogle the lady."
"Ogle!—when going fifty-three!"
"Learn a few lines of poetry."
"Yes, Milton's Paradise Lost. Go on."
"Tell the young lady that your heart is consumed with love."
"Consumed with love, yes, go on."
"Squeeze her hand."
"I cannot! That I cannot!" gasped Professor Maedler. "Look at my whiskers. They are grey. There is a point beyond which I cannot go. Rollmann, why may I not settle it all with the mother, and let you court the young lady for me by proxy."
"No, no, you must do it yourself."
"I would not be jealous. Consider, I care nothing for the young girl. It is the moon I want. That you shall not touch or breathe on."
"My dear Maedler, you and I are sure to be invited to dine with the family on Sunday. After dinner we will take a stroll in the garden. During dinner mind and be attentive to Miss Minna, and feed her with honeyed words. When we visit the garden I will tackle the mother, as Mephistopheles engages Martha, and you, you gay Faust, will have to be the gallant to Minna."
"My good Rollmann! I dislike the simile. It offends me. Consider my age, my whiskers, my position at the Dorpat University, my map of the moon in four sheets, my paper on the occultation of Mars."
"Pay attention to me, if you want your wax globe. Frau Witte, the Councillor and I will sit drinking coffee in the arbour. You ask Minna to show you the garden. When you are gone I will begin at once with the mother, praise you, and say how comfortably you are provided for at Dorpat, laud your good qualities, and bring her to understand that you are a suitor for the hand of her daughter. Meanwhile press your cause with ardour."
"With ardour! I shall not be able to get up any warmth."
"Think of the wax moon! direct your raptures to that."
"This is all very well," said Maedler fretfully, "but you have forgotten the main thing. I know you will make a mistake. You have asked for the hand of the daughter, and said nothing about the moon."
"Do not be concerned."
"But I am concerned. It would be a pretty mischief if I got the daughter's hand instead of the face of the moon."
"I will manage that you have what you want. But the moon must not rise over the matrimonial scene till the preliminaries are settled. I will represent to the old lady what credit will accrue to her if her moon be exhibited and lectured on at the Dorpat University by so distinguished an astronomer as yourself. Then, be well assured, she will give you the wax moon along with her daughter."
"Very well, I will do what I can. Only, further, explain to me the whole process, that I may learn it by heart. It seems to me as knotty to a beginner as Euler's proof of the Binomial Theorem."
"It is very easy. Pay attention. You must begin to talk about the fascination which a domestic life exerts on you; you then say that the sight of such an united household as that in which you find yourself influences you profoundly."
"I see. Causes a deflection in my perihelion. That deflection is calculable, the force excited calculable, the position of the attractive body estimable. I direct my telescope in the direction, and discover—Minna. Put astronomically, I can understand it."
"But you must not put it astronomically to her. Paint in glowing tints the charms of the domestic hearth—that is to say, of the stove. Touch sadly on your forlorn condition, your unloved heart—are you paying attention, or thinking of the moon?"
"On the contrary, I was thinking of myself, from a planetary point of view. I see, a wife is a satellite revolving round her man. I see it all now. Jupiter has four."
"Sigh; let the corners of your mouth droop. Throw, if you can, an emotional vibration into your tones, and say that hitherto life has been to you a school, where you have been set hard tasks; not a home. Here shake your head slowly, drop a tear if you can, and say again, in a low and thrilling voice, 'Not a home!' Now for the poetry. Till now, you add, you have looked into the starry vault—"
"It is not a vault at all."
"Never mind; say this. Till now you have looked into the starry vault for your heaven, and not dreamed that a heaven full of peaceful lights was twinkling invitingly about your feet. That is poetical, is it not? It must succeed."
"Quite so, I should never have thought of it."
"Then turn, and look into Miss Minna's eyes."
"But suppose she is looking in another direction?"
"She will not be. A lady is always ready to help a stumbling lover over the impediments in the way of a declaration. She will have her eyes at command, ready to meet yours."
"Go on."
"You will presently come to a rose tree. You must stop there and be silent. Then you must admire the roses, and beg Miss Minna to present you with one."
"But I do not want any roses. What can I do with them? I am lodging at an hotel."
"Never mind, you must want one. When she has picked and offered it—"
"But perhaps she will not."
"Fiddlesticks! Of course she will. Then take the rose, press your lips to it, and burst forth into raptures."
"Excuse me, how am I to do the raptures?"
"Think of the wax moon, man. Exclaim, 'Oh that I might take the fair Minna, fairer than this rose, to my heart, as I apply this flower to my buttonhole!'"
"Shall I say nothing about the wax moon?"
"Not a word. Leave me to manage that."
"Go on."
"Then she will look down, confused, at the gravel, and stammer. Press her for a Yes or No. Promise to destroy yourself if she says No. Take her hand and squeeze it."
"Must I squeeze it? About how much pressure to the square-foot should I apply?"
"Then say, 'Come, let us go to your parents, and obtain their blessing.' The thing is done."
"But suppose she were to say No?"
Rollmann stamped with impatience. "I tell you she will not say No, now that the theological candidate has dropped through."
"Well," said Professor Maedler, "I must go along with it, now I have made up my mind to it. But, on my word, as an exact reasoner, I had no idea of the difficulties men have to go through to get married. Why, the calculation of the deflections of the planets is nothing to it. And the Grand Turk, like Jupiter, has more satellites than one!"