Читать книгу Louisa of Prussia and Her Times - L. Muhlbach - Страница 25

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At that moment of silent devotion, no one took any notice of a lady who crossed the threshold a few seconds after the rabbi had entered. She was a tall, superb creature of wonderful beauty. Her black hair, her glowing eyes, her finely-curved nose, the whole shape of her face imparted to her some resemblance to Fanny Itzig, the banker’s beautiful daughter, and indicated that she belonged likewise to the people who, scattered over the whole world, have with unshaken fidelity and constancy preserved everywhere their type and habits. And yet, upon examining the charming stranger somewhat more closely, it became evident that she bore no resemblance either to Fanny or to her sisters. Hers was a strange and peculiar style of beauty, irresistibly attractive and chilling at the same time—a tall, queenly figure, wrapped in a purple velvet dress, fastened under her bosom by a golden sash. Her shoulders, dazzling white, and of a truly classical shape, were bare; her short ermine mantilla had slipped from them and hung gracefully on her beautiful, well-rounded arms, on which magnificent diamond bracelets were glittering. Her black hair fell down in long, luxuriant ringlets on both sides of her transparent, pale cheeks, and was fastened in a knot by means of several large diamond pins. A diamond of the most precious brilliants crowned her high and thoughtful forehead.

She looked as proud and glorious as a queen, and there was something haughty, imperious, and cold in the glance with which she now slowly and searchingly surveyed the large room.

“Tell me,” whispered Baron Arnstein, bending over Fanny Itzig, “who is the beautiful lady now standing near the door?”

“Oh!” exclaimed Fanny, joyfully, “she has come after all. We scarcely dared to hope for her arrival. It is Marianne Meier.”

“What! Marianne Meier?” asked Baron Arnstein. “The celebrated beauty whom Goethe has loved—for whom the Swedish ambassador at Berlin, Baron Bernstein, has entertained so glowing a passion, and suffered so much—and who is now the mistress of the Austrian minister, the Prince von Reuss?”

“Hush, for Heaven’s sake, hush!” whispered Fanny. “She is coming toward us.”

And Fanny went to meet the beautiful lady. Marianne gently inclined her head and kissed Fanny with the dignified bearing of a queen.

“I have come to congratulate you and your sisters,” she said, in a sonorous, magnificent alto voice. “I wanted to see how beautiful you looked, and whether your betrothed was worthy of possessing you or not.”

Fanny turned round to beckon Baron Arnstein to join them, but he had just left with the rabbi and the other officers of the synagogue.

The ladies were now alone, for the ceremony was about to begin. And now the women entered, whose duty it was to raise loud lamentations and weep over the fate of the brides who were about to leave the parental roof and to follow their husbands. They spread costly carpets at the feet of the brides, who were sitting on armchairs among the assembled ladies, and strewing flowers on these carpets, they muttered, sobbing and weeping, ancient Hebrew hymns. The mother stood behind them with trembling lips, and, raising her tearful eyes toward heaven. The door was opened, and the sexton in a long robe, his white beard flowing down on his breast, appeared, carrying in his hand a white cushion with three splendid lace veils. He was followed by Mr. Itzig, the father of the three brides. Taking the veils from the cushion, and muttering prayers all the while, he laid them on the heads of his daughters so that their faces and bodies seemed to be surrounded by a thin and airy mist. And the mourning-women sobbed, and two tears rolled over the pale cheeks of the deeply-moved mother. The two men withdrew silently, and the ladies were alone again.

But now, in the distance, the heart-stirring sounds of a choir of sweet, sonorous children’s voices were heard. How charming did these voices reecho through the room! They seemed to call the brides, and, as if fascinated by the inspiring melody, they slowly rose from their seats. Their mother approached the eldest sister and offered her hand to her. Two of the eldest ladies took the hands of the younger sisters. The other ladies and the mourning-women formed in pairs behind them, and then the procession commenced moving in the direction of the inviting notes of the anthem. Thus they crossed the rooms—nearer and nearer came the music—and finally, on passing through the last door, the ladies stepped into a long hall, beautifully decorated with flowers and covered with a glass roof through which appeared the deep, transparent azure of the wintry sky. In the centre of this hall there arose a purple canopy with golden tassels. The rabbi, praying and with uplifted hands, was standing under it with the three bridegrooms. The choir of the singers, hidden behind flowers and orange-trees, grew louder and louder, and to this jubilant music the ladies conducted the brides to the canopy, and the ceremony commenced.

When it was concluded, when the veils were removed from the heads of the brides so that they could now look freely into the world, the whole party returned to the parlor, and brides and bridegrooms received the congratulations of their friends.

Fanny and Marianne Meier were chatting in a bay-window at some distance from the rest of the company. They were standing there, arm in arm—Fanny in her white bridal costume, like a radiant lily, and Marianne in her purple dress, resembling the peerless queen of flowers.

“You are going to leave Berlin to-day with your husband?” asked Marianne.

“We leave in an hour,” said Fanny, sighing.

Marianne had heard this sigh. “Do you love your husband?” she asked, hastily.

“I have seen him only twice,” whispered Fanny.

A sarcastic smile played on Marianne’s lips. “Then they have simply sold you to him like a slave-girl to a wealthy planter,” she said. “It was a mere bargain and sale, and still you boast of it, and pass your disgusting trade in human hearts for virtue, and believe you have a right to look proudly and contemptuously down upon those who refuse to be sold like goods, and who prefer to give away their love to being desecrated without love.”

“I do not boast of having married without love,” said Fanny, gently. “Oh, I should willingly give up wealth and splendor—I should be quite ready to live in poverty and obscurity with a man whom I loved.”

“But first the old rabbi would have to consecrate your union with such a man, I suppose?—otherwise you would not follow him, notwithstanding your love?” asked Marianne.

“Yes, Marianne, that would be indispensable,” said Fanny, gravely, firmly fixing her large eyes upon her friend. “No woman should defy the moral laws of the world, or if she does, she will always suffer for it. If I loved and could not possess the man of my choice, if I could not belong to him as his wedded wife, I should give him up. The grief would kill me, perhaps, but I should die with the consolation of having remained faithful to virtue—”

“And of having proved false to love!” exclaimed Marianne, scornfully. “Phrases! Nothing but phrases learned by heart, my child, but the world boasts of such phrases, and calls such sentiments moral! Oh, hush! hush! I know what you are going to say, and how you wish to admonish me. I heard very well how contemptuously your husband called me the mistress of the Prince von Reuss. Don’t excuse him, and don’t deny it, for I have heard it. I might reply to it what Madame de Balbi said the other day upon being upbraided with being the mistress of the Royal Prince d’Artois: ‘Le sang des princes ne souille pas!’ But I do not want to excuse myself; on the contrary, all of you shall some day apologize to me. For I tell you, Fanny, I am pursuing my own path and have a peculiar aim steadfastly in view. Oh, it is a great, a glorious aim. I want to see the whole world at my feet; all those ridiculous prejudices of birth, rank, and virtue shall bow to the Jewess, and the Jewess shall become the peer of the most distinguished representatives of society. See, Fanny, that is my plan and my aim, and it is yours too; we are only pursuing it in different ways—YOU, by the side of a man whose wife you are, and to whom you have pledged at the altar love and fidelity WITHOUT feeling them; I, by the side of a man whose friend I am—to whom, it is true, I have not pledged at the altar love and fidelity, but whom I shall faithfully love BECAUSE I have given my heart to him. Let God decide whose is the true morality. The world is on your side and condemns me, but some day I shall hurl back into its teeth all its contempt and scorn, and I shall compel it to bow most humbly to me.”

“And whosoever sees you in your proud, radiant beauty, must feel that you will succeed in accomplishing what you are going to undertake,” said Fanny, bending an admiring glance on the glorious creature by her side.

Marianne nodded gratefully. “Let us pursue our aim,” she said, “for it is one and the same. Both of us have a mission to fulfil, Fanny; we have to avenge the Jewess upon the pride of the Christian women; we have to prove to them that we are their equals in every respect, that we are perhaps better, more accomplished, and talented than all of those haughty Christian women. How often did they neglect and insult us in society! How often did they offensively try to eclipse us! How often did they vex us by their scorn and insolent bearing! We will pay it all back to them; we will scourge them with the scourges with which they have scourged us, and compel them to bow to us!”

“They shall at least consider and treat us as their equals,” said Fanny, gravely. “I am not longing for revenge, but I want to hold my place in society, and to prove to them that I am just as well-bred and aristocratic a lady, and have an equal, nay, a better right to call myself a representative of true nobility; for ours is a more ancient nobility than that of all these Christian aristocrats, and we can count our ancestors farther back into the most remote ages than they—our fathers, the proud Levites, having been high-priests in Solomon’s temple, and the people having treated them as noblemen even at that time. We will remind the Christian ladies of this whenever they talk to us about their own ancestors, who, at best, only date back to the middle ages or to Charlemagne.”

“That is right. I like to hear you talk in this strain,” exclaimed Marianne, joyfully. “I see you will represent us in Vienna in a noble and proud manner, and be an honor to the Jews of Berlin. Oh, I am so glad, Fanny, and I shall always love you for it. And do not forget me either. If it pleases God, I shall some day come to Vienna, and play there a brilliant part. However, we shall never be rivals, but always friends. Will you promise it?”

“I promise it,” said Fanny, giving her soft white hand to her friend. Marianne pressed it warmly.

“I accept your promise and shall remind you of it some day,” she said. “But now farewell, Fanny, for I see your young husband yonder, who would like to speak to you, and yet does not come to us for fear of coming in contact with the mistress of the Prince von Reuss. God bless and protect his virtue, that stands in such nervous fear of being infected! Farewell; don’t forget our oath, and remember me.”

She tenderly embraced her friend and imprinted a glowing kiss upon her forehead, and then quickly turning around, walked across the room. All eyes followed the tall, proud lady with admiring glances, and some whispered, “How beautiful she is! How proud, how glorious!” She took no notice, however; she had so often received the homage of these whispers, that they could no longer gladden her heart. Without saluting any one, her head proudly erect, she crossed the room, drawing her ermine mantilla closely around her shoulders, and deeming every thing around her unworthy of notice.

In the anteroom a footman in gorgeous livery was waiting for her. He hastened down-stairs before her, opened the street door, and rushed out in order to find his mistress’s carriage among the vast number of coaches encumbering both sides of the street, and then bring it to the door.

Marianne stood waiting in the door, stared at by the inquisitive eyes of the large crowd that had gathered in front of the house to see the guests of the wealthy banker Itzig upon their departure from the wedding. Marianne paid no attention whatever to these bystanders. Her large black eyes swept over all those faces before her with an air of utter indifference; she took no interest in any one of them, and their impertinent glances made apparently no impression upon her.

But the crowd took umbrage at her queenly indifference.

“Just see,” the bystanders whispered here and there, “just see the proud Jewess! How she stares at us, as if we were nothing but thin air! What splendid diamonds she has got! Wonder if she is indebted for them to her father’s usury?”

On hearing this question, that was uttered by an old woman in rags, the whole crowd laughed uproariously. Marianne even then took no notice. She only thought that her carriage was a good while coming up, and the supposed slowness of her footman was the sole cause of the frown which now commenced clouding her brow. When the crowd ceased laughing, a woman, a Jewess, in a dirty and ragged dress, stepped forth and placed herself close to Marianne.

“You think she is indebted to her father for those diamonds!” she yelled. “No, I know better, and can tell you all about it. Her father was a good friend of mine, and frequently traded with me when he was still a poor, peddling Jew. He afterward made a great deal of money, while I grew very poor; but he never bought her those diamonds. Just listen to me, and I will tell you what sort of a woman she is who now looks down on us with such a haughty air. She is the Jewess Marianne Meier, the mistress of the old Prince von Reuss!”

“Ah, a mistress!” shouted the crowd, sneeringly. “And she is looking at us as though she were a queen. She wears diamonds in her hair, and wants to hide her shame by dressing in purple velvet. She—”

At that moment the carriage rolled up to the door; the footman obsequiously opened the coach door and hastened to push back the crowd in order to enable Marianne to walk over the carpet spread out on the sidewalk to her carriage.

“We won’t be driven back!” roared the crowd; “we want to see the beautiful mistress—we want to see her close by.”

And laughing, shouting, and jeering, the bystanders crowded closely around Marianne. She walked past them, proud and erect, and did not seem to hear the insulting remarks that were being levelled at her. Only her cheeks had turned even paler than before, and her lips were quivering a little.

Now she had reached her carriage and entered. The footman closed the door, but the mob still crowded around the carriage, and looked through the glass windows, shouting, “Look at her! look at her! What a splendid mistress she is! Hurrah for her! Long live the mistress!”

The coachman whipped the horses, and the carriage commenced moving, but it could make but little headway, the jeering crowd rolling along with it like a huge black wave, and trying to keep it back at every step.

Marianne sat proudly erect in her carriage, staring at the mob with naming and disdainful eyes. Not a tear moistened her eyes; not a word, not a cry issued from her firmly-compressed lips. Even when her carriage, turning around the corner, gained at last a free field and sped away with thundering noise, there was no change whatever in her attitude, or in the expression of her countenance. She soon reached the embassy buildings. The carriage stopped in front of the vestibule, and the footman opened the coach door. Marianne alighted and walked slowly and proudly to the staircase. The footman hastened after her, and when she had just reached the first landing place he stood behind her and whispered;

“I beg your pardon, madame; I was really entirely innocent. Your carriage being the last to arrive, it had to take the hindmost place; that was the reason why it took us so long to get it to the door. I beg your pardon, madame.”

Marianne only turned to him for a moment, bending a single contemptuous glance upon him, and then, without uttering a word, continued ascending the staircase.

The footman paused and looked after the proud lady, whispering with a sigh—

“She will discharge me—she never forgives!”

Marianne had now reached the upper story, and walked down the corridor as slowly and as proudly as ever. Her valet stood at the door, receiving her with a profound bow, while opening the folding door. She crossed gravely and silently the long suite of rooms now opening before her, and finally entered her dressing-room. Her two lady’s maids were waiting for her here in order to assist her in putting on a more comfortable dress.

When they approached their mistress, she made an imperious, repelling gesture.

“Begone!” she said, “begone!”

That was all she said, but it sounded like a scream of rage and pain, and the lady’s maids hastened to obey, or rather to escape. When the door had closed behind them, Marianne rushed toward it and locked it, and drew the heavy curtain over it.

Now she was alone—now nobody could see her, nobody could hear her. With a wild cry she raised her beautiful arms, tore the splendid diadem of brilliants from her hair, and hurled it upon the floor. She then with trembling hands loosened the golden sash from her tapering waist, and the diamond pins from her hair, and threw all these precious trinkets disdainfully upon the floor. And now with her small feet, with her embroidered silken shoes, she furiously stamped on them with flaming eyes, and in her paroxysm of anger slightly opening her lips, so as to show her two rows of peerless teeth which she held firmly pressed together.

Her fine hair, no longer fastened by the diamond pins, had fallen down, and was now floating around her form like a black veil, and closely covered her purple dress. Thus she looked like a goddess of vengeance, so beautiful, so proud, so glorious and terrible—her small hands raised toward heaven, and her feet crushing the jewelry.

“Insulted, scorned!” she murmured. “The meanest woman on the street believes she has a right to despise me—me, the celebrated Marianne Meier—me, at whose feet counts and princes have sighed in vain! And who am I, then, that they should dare to despise me?”

She asked this question with a defiant, burning glance toward heaven, but all at once she commenced trembling, and hung her head humbly and mournfully.

“I am a disgraced woman,” she whispered. “Diamonds and velvet do not hide my shame. I am the prince’s mistress. That’s all!”

“But it shall be so no longer!” she exclaimed, suddenly. “I will put a stop to it. I MUST put a stop to it! This hour has decided my destiny and broken my stubbornness. I thought I could defy the world in MY way. I believed I could laugh at its prejudices; but the world is stronger than I, and therefore I have to submit, and shall hereafter defy it in its own way. And I shall do so most assuredly. I shall do so on the spot.”

Without reflecting any further, she left her chamber and hastened once more through the rooms. Her hair now was waving wildly around her shoulders, and her purple dress, no longer held together by the golden sash, was floating loosely around her form. She took no notice whatever of her dishabille; only one idea, only one purpose filled her heart.

In breathless haste she hurried on, and now quickly opened a last door, through which she entered a room furnished in the most sumptuous and comfortable manner.

At her appearance, so sudden, and evidently unexpected, the elderly gentleman, who had reposed on the silken sofa, arose and turned around with a gesture of displeasure.

On recognizing Marianne, however, a smile overspread his features, and he went to meet her with a pleasant greeting.

“Back already, dearest?” he said, extending his hand toward her.

“Yes, your highness—I am back already,” she said drily and coldly.

The gentleman upon whose features the traces of a life of dissipation were plainly visible, fixed his eyes with an anxious air upon the beautiful lady. He only now noticed her angry mien and the strange dishabille in which she appeared before him.

“Good Heaven, Marianne!” he asked, sharply, “what is the cause of your agitation, of your coldness toward me? What has happened to you?”

“What has happened to me? The most infamous insults have been heaped upon my head!” she exclaimed with quivering lips, an angry blush suffusing her cheeks, “For a quarter of an hour, nay, for an eternity, I was the target of the jeers, the contempt, and the scorn of the rabble that publicly abused me in the most disgraceful manner!”

“Tell me,” exclaimed the old gentleman, “what has occurred, and whose fault it was!”

“Whose fault it was?” she asked, bending a piercing glance upon him. “YOURS, my prince; you alone are to blame for my terrible disgrace and humiliation. For your sake the rabble has reviled me, called me your mistress, and laughed at my diamonds; calling them the reward of my shame! Oh, how many insults, how many mortifications have I not already suffered for your sake—with how many bloody tears have I not cursed this love which attaches me to you, and which I was nevertheless unable to tear from my heart, for it is stronger than myself. But now the cup of bitterness is full to overflowing. My pride cannot hear so much contumely and scorn. Farewell, my prince, my beloved! I must leave you. I cannot stay with you any longer. Shame would kill me. Farewell! Hereafter, no one shall dare to call me a mistress.”

With a last glowing farewell, she turned to the door, but the prince kept her back. “Marianne,” he asked, tenderly, “do you not know that I love you, and that I cannot live without you?”

She looked at him with a fascinating smile. “And I?” she asked, “far from you, shall die of a broken heart; with you, I shall die of shame. I prefer the former. Farewell! No one shall ever dare again to call me by that name.” And her hand touched already the door-knob.

The prince encircled her waist with his arms and drew her back. “I shall not let you go,” he said, ardently. “You are mine, and shall remain so! Oh, why are you so proud and so cold? Why will you not sacrifice your faith to our love? Why do you insist upon remaining a Jewess?”

“Your highness,” she said, leaning her head on his shoulder, “why do you want me to become a Christian?”

“Why?” he exclaimed. “Because my religion and the laws of my country prevent me from marrying a Jewess.”

“And if I should sacrifice to you the last that has remained to me?” she whispered—“my conscience and my religion.”

“Marianne,” he exclaimed, solemnly, “I repeat to you what I have told you so often already: ‘Become a Christian in order to become my wife.’”

She encircled his neck impetuously with her arms and clung to him with a passionate outburst of tenderness. “I will become a Christian!” she whispered.