Читать книгу Through Night to Light - Spielhagen Friedrich - Страница 10

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Oswald need not have feared. Berger was sitting in the centre of the darkened room, all the curtains being closed, before a table covered with books. He was resting his head in both hands, and seemed to sleep, for he did not stir even when Oswald stepped up close to the table. Oswald did not dare wake him. He remained standing by the table and looked at the poor sufferer, his eyes filling unconsciously with tears. What havoc these few months had made with the face once so proud, so full of energy; the dark curling hair was grizzled; the massive brow, hewn apparently out of the live granite, appeared even more powerful and imposing, thanks to the increased baldness at the temples. A full beard, formerly an aversion to Berger, now flowed, silver-gray, from cheek, lips, and chin, so that the end nearly touched the table. His hands, once so plump and carefully kept, had become so thin, so transparent! And what a costume! A blue smock-frock, instead of the black coat which was never allowed to show a particle of dust; a coarse, ill-fitting shirt, instead of the fine, dazzling white linen upon which he formerly insisted. On the table a worn-out slouched hat and a stick, which had evidently not long ago formed part of a hedge of thorns, in place of the smooth silk hat from Paris, and the clouded cane with its gold head! If the outer man could change to such an extent, what a revolution must have taken place in the lowest depths of the soul!

Berger stirred. He raised his head, opened his eyes, and looked at Oswald. His eyes were deep and clear, and looked larger than usual; he did not start nor betray astonishment, wonder, or fear, at the unexpected sight.

"I had but just now dreamt of you, Oswald," he said, rising, with a low voice, from which all former sharpness and energy seemed to have departed.

Oswald could restrain himself no longer. He sobbed aloud and threw himself into Berger's arms. Now only, lying on the bosom of this man, he felt all his sufferings fully, as he thought; now only, in the arms of this man who had endured so much, he fancied he need not be ashamed any longer of the tears which his heart had bled when his eyes refused to weep.

Berger held him in his arms, as a father holds his son who comes home from a far country in which he has fed with the swine.

"Weep on," he said, "weep! Tears relieve a young, overflowing heart. When I was as young as you, I wept as you do; now my eyes have forgotten how to weep."

"Berger, dear, dear Berger!"

"I knew I should see you again. I expected you long ago. I did not think you would stand it so long in the great desert outside. Weep on! Tears are the price with which we buy our souls back again, when we find what a wretched bargain we had made before we knew better. Ere we give up life we have to learn that it is better not to live. Some learn that sooner, others later. Be glad that you are one of those who during the bitterness of the Sansara have already a foretaste of the sweetness of the Nirvana."

He left Oswald, and took his hat and cane from the table.

"Come!" he said.

Oswald was so deeply moved by this scene that the recollection of Berger's odd costume only suggested to him the conviction how utterly impossible it would be to speak to such a man of such things. He would as lief have reminded a mother who was weeping over the body of her child of some defect in her toilet, a bow out of place, or a ribbon which had come loose.

They passed through the long passages, down the broad stone staircase and out into the court-yard. As they went across the latter, the young man who was sitting on the bench came up to them and repeated the question which he had before asked of Oswald:

"I certainly have the honor to address the Emperor of Fez and Morocco?"

"No!" replied Berger, "The emperor is not coming; you may rely upon it."

"Is not coming!" repeated the young man; and his pale face became still paler, and his eyes wandered restlessly to and fro; "is not coming! how do you know that?"

"Because, if he should come it would not be for your happiness, as you imagine, but for your final ruin. Why do you wish him to come? To bring you gold, which you will gamble away? and jewels, which you will lavish upon your mistresses; to afford you the means of continuing a life which you ought to thank God on your knees you have escaped from--if you believe in any God? What appears to you a star of promise, is a will-o'-the-wisp from the moors. Do not trust in its glimmer--it lures you hither and thither, and each time deeper into the moor. Turn resolutely back from it! I tell you once more, the emperor is not coming! and it is fortunate for you that he does not come!"

"Do you know his majesty so intimately?" stammered the young man.

"Very intimately," said Berger, and a peculiar smile played on his features, "only too intimately. I also was misled by his majesty. You expect from his promise money and lands. I was promised--never mind what; and thus he promises everybody something else, in order to fool and trick everybody. The conviction that his majesty's promises are nothing but wind--that is the beginning of wisdom, and the last conclusion of wisdom into the bargain."

Berger had uttered the last words with a suddenly-sinking voice, as if he were speaking to himself. He paid no further attention to the young man, who was standing there, hat in hand, with an indescribably sad face. Nor did he seem to notice Oswald, who followed him silently, and most painfully affected by the touching scene.

Berger apparently felt what was going on in his companion's heart, for they had left the gate which was opened to them without delay, and found themselves on the turnpike, which followed first one bank, and then, after crossing the river on a bridge, the opposite bank, rising higher and higher into the mountains. He suddenly broke his silence and said,

"You are wondering why I did not treat the poor fellow more tenderly, instead of destroying so rudely his absurd illusions? This apparent cruelty was in reality a great kindness."

"Who is the unfortunate man?"

"A Count Mattan, from our country. He has spent during the last few years a fortune of half a million in senseless extravagance. Now he hopes for the fabulous emperor, who is to restore to him all his losses."

"But if your robbing the young man of his last consolation should deprive him of the last feeble remnant of sense----"

"You speak like Doctor Birkenhain. It makes me laugh to see how these optimists blindly try to arrest the power which drives man irresistibly into destruction, like children who try to stop a river with their little hands. My study here is the observation of this peculiar struggle, which would be grand if it were not so ludicrous. These doctors move in the dark, as if they were playing blindman's buff, and think they have cured the disease when they have gotten rid of the symptoms. They do not know, they do not even suspect, that life itself is the shoe that pinches, the garment of Nessus which burns our living body--and that to pull off this shoe, to throw away the garment, is not only the best but the only remedy by which we can escape the wretchedness of existence."

They had left the highroad and reached a clearing in the forest, which was thickly overgrown with moss and heather. Before them was a view over the tops of pine trees into the plain from which they had ascended, and far into the land of hills; behind them the forest extended upwards. It was quiet, perfectly quiet, around them. Long white gossamer floated through the thin, clear air. The flowers were gone; the birds had forgotten their songs, the locusts their chirping; summer itself had died, and Nature sat in silent grief by the corpse. Even the autumnal sunshine had something sad in it, like a widow's smile; the blue of the sky was sickly, like the tearful eye of a mourner.

Berger had seated himself on the low stump of a tree, and Oswald lay down close by him on the thick heather. In this silence of the forest, which reminded him so forcibly of the woods of Berkow and Grenwitz, and of the painfully sweet days he had spent there, he felt that irrepressible impulse to speak which at times overcomes us all of a sudden. As the Catholic is moved to whisper his deep-hidden secrets into the ear of the priest, his personified conscience, so Oswald felt impelled to confess to the unhappy man by his side, in whom he had ever seen another self, all that he had experienced, tried to obtain, suffered and sinned, during these last eventful, fatal months. He did not think of Doctor Birkenhain's suggestion to interest Berger by all means at his command in his own fate, and thus to play the part of the physician to his patient. Was he not a very sick patient himself? But, whatever might agitate his heart--the man by his side had suffered worse things; what, he hardly dared confess to himself--the man who was wandering with lowered head in the dark labyrinth of his soul, and could find no way to light, he could hear all, all. And thus he told him, first hesitatingly, then with animation, with passionate excitement, all he had to tell: his love of Melitta, his love of Helen, his friendship for Bruno, and how jealousy and sickness of heart had robbed him of the one, and strange circumstances and death of the other.

Berger had listened in silence, supporting his chin in his hand, and looking with his large eyes fixedly at the distance, without once interrupting Oswald. At last, when the young man wound up with the painful complaint "Why did you send me into this troublesome world? Why did you let me wander about so long in this darkness?" Berger raised his head, turned his eyes towards him, and said slowly, thoughtfully,

"Because you had to learn this also; because, as long as you were with me in Grunwald, you still believed in that great falsehood which we call life; because the pride with which you insisted upon its being a truth had to be broken. I have led you the shortest and safest way to wisdom. I knew you would allow yourself to be dazzled by false splendor; I knew you would hasten with beating heart, with parched tongue, through the lonely, white sand of the desert, towards the blue lake with the wooded shore, which drew back further and further as you thought you were coming nearer, until you would at last break down, cursing your sufferings and your existence. Be joyful! You have gone through with it; you have finished your first and hardest course in as many weeks as it took me years. You have opened your eyes and looked at what was there, and behold! it was not good! The value of life, the purpose of life, has become doubtful to you. You have begun to understand that the assertion of superficial optimists: Life is the purpose of life! is hardly correct--unless one could find satisfaction in striving after a purpose which can never be accomplished, or which, if it be accomplished, is worth nothing. You have seen how indissolubly untruth, stupidity, and vulgarity are interwoven with truth, honesty, wisdom, and majesty. This knowledge, which only the brutalized slave, grinning under the lash of the driver, receives with indifference, but which saddens noble hearts unto death, is the beginning of wisdom, the entrance to the great mystery."

"And the great mystery?"

Berger made no reply; he looked again with fixed eyes at the distance. Oswald dared not repeat his question.

Deep silence all around. Silently the light gossamer floated through the clear air; silently the evening sunshine wove its golden net around the heather and the dark-green tops of the pine-trees.

They sat thus speechless side by side--silent and sad, like two children lost in the woods. But while the one, who had wound up his life, and who was fearfully in earnest with his contempt of the world, suffered himself to sink deeper and deeper into the abyss of his grief, the young, fresh vitality of the other struggled mightily towards light and air.

"What is this in me which rouses me at this very moment, when I least expected it, to oppose your wisdom?" he inquired, looking up at Berger. "My reason tells me you are right, but my eye drinks with delight the beauty of this evening landscape; drinks it down into the heart, and there, in my heart, a voice whispers: 'The world is so fair, so fair! and even if life makes you suffer bitter things without end, it is still sweet.' Tell me, Berger, did you ever love with all the strength of your heart? and can love die, as the summer dies, and the flowers, and the warm sunlight?"

Berger smiled--it was a strange, weird smile.

"Did I ever love?"

He cast down his eyes, and took off with his stick a piece of the thick crust of moss at his feet.

"What good does it do," he said, "to lift the veil which so many years have spread over the past? You see what is below--decay and destruction."

"And yet," he said, after a pause, "it is but right you should learn that also. Hear, then:"

"It is now thirty years. I was then at your age, but without having made your experiences; clinging to life in full, unbroken strength, and thinking it as sweet and precious as a love of my heart. If ever man was enthusiastic about liberty and beauty--about all those fail fancies with which we try to beautify our miserable existence here, and to hide its wretched hollowness--if ever man was raving about those bloodless images which we call ideals--I was that man. In my madness I fancied that eternal bliss might be won even here below wherever men were living in a free country. I believed in my native land, and sealed my faith with my blood on the battle-fields of Leipzig and Waterloo. I returned full of burning zeal to complete the great work. But before I could undertake to heal the wounds which my country had received during the war, I had to think of healing my own wounds. They sent me, when I recovered, to Fichtenau.

"In those days Fichtenau was not what it is now. There was no Kurhaus then, and no asylum for the insane; nevertheless the town was always full of visitors, for the poetic halo with which the great men of Weimar had surrounded these valleys attracted the crowd. I kept aloof, and lived only for my health and my studies.

"I boarded in the house of an old schoolmaster with whom I had become acquainted, and whose friendship I cultivated because he possessed quite a large library, and books were not so easily accessible then, especially in this remote part of the world. But the old gentleman possessed yet another treasure, besides his library--a most beautiful daughter. The daughter soon became more interesting to me than the library. You asked me if I had ever loved with all my heart. If you had known Leonora, and seen how high and how powerfully my heart then beat, you would not have asked me that question.

"It was a summer day--a marvellously beautiful summer day. We had gone out into the woods after dinner--a mixed company--young and old. We lay down on the swelling moss in the shade of the pine-trees. How my eye dwelt upon her graceful form as she did the honors of the company with merry modesty; how my ear drank in the tones of her silvery, sweet voice! It was the old song of the sirens, which was heard thousands and thousands of years ago, and which will yet be heard thousands and thousands of years hence--till the time is fulfilled.

"After the coffee we strolled about in the forest--in groups, by pairs, as accident and inclination brought it about. I had followed Leonora, who was gathering a bunch of wild-flowers. I helped her, although I did not know much of these things, and was often laughed at by the teasing girls on account of my odd selection. She however became more and more silent the deeper we went into the wood and the further we left the others behind. As she became more silent and anxious, I grew more animated and pressing. Her silence and the blush on her cheeks told me what I had long since desired in secret, what I had prayed heaven to grant me, and what I had yet never hoped to obtain.

"Then we stepped out upon this clearing. The same mountains which are there lying before us looked as blue to us, and the same sun which looks down from heaven now poured a dazzling light lavishly down upon us. And the golden light shone brightly on her dark, curling hair, and played upon her round, white shoulders; and here, on this very place, we fell into each other's arms and swore each other eternal love, amid hot kisses and hot tears.

"The stump on which I am now sitting was then a tall, slender, powerful pine-tree, and I was young and slender, and full of exuberant strength. The tree has been cut down and burnt in the fire; I--I have become what I am----"

Berger paused and stirred up the moss at his feet with his cane. Oswald looked with reverence at the unfortunate man; but he dared not speak, nor even seize Berger's hand, which was listlessly hanging down by his side. Lofty calmness rested on Berger's face; not a gesture betrayed what was going on in his heart; but he did not look like one who requires sympathy or expects sympathy.

"Not at once," he suddenly continued--"the strength within me was great and could only be broken by piecemeal. I spoke, after our return home, to the old gentleman; he liked me and was heartily glad to see our affection. A few days later I returned to the University in order to resume my studies, which the war had interrupted. I studied with increasing diligence, for my thirst of knowledge was hardly less of an incentive than my desire to be able as soon as possible to carry Leonora home with me as my wife. I therefore went only rarely to Fichtenau, and then stayed only a short time to sun myself in Leonora's love, and to return to my work with new courage and new strength. But I had another lady-love, whom I worshipped with no less ardor--Liberty. I shared that passion with many other noble young men. We did not mean to have shed our blood on the battlefields in vain; we were not willing to become the prey of so many jackals and wolves, after we had successfully overcome a lion. But the jackals were on their guard, and the wolves broke in our fold.

"I had been engaged in teaching for a year; I had prepared everything for the wedding; the day was fixed; I was counting the days and the hours. Suddenly, one night, I was seized in my bed by armed men. My papers were sealed up; and the next night I slept in a casemate of a fortress.

"Or, rather, I did not sleep--I was enraged, I was maddened; my hands bled from my efforts to break the bars of my cage. Gradually I consoled myself with the hope that this captivity could not last long, and Leonora--well! she would bear her hard lot like a heroine. A second Egmont, I saw freedom and my beloved hand in hand. Through night to light! Through battle to victory! That was the mystic word with which I tried to frighten back the serpent-haired monster. Despair, when it was pressing upon me and about to strike its fangs into my heart. The mystic word had ample time to prove its power. I remained in prison for five years!

"You may imagine if my faith in the so-called divine nature of the world's government was shaken during this time, which I measured by the beats of my heart, and the drops which fell, one by one, from the damp ceiling of my cell. But, I told you before, my strength was great, and I was sternly determined to live. I had heard, to be sure, in the silent nights which saw me tossing restlessly upon my hard couch, the great word that releases us, but I had understood it only half, and perhaps not quite half. I had but just begun to spell the letters in my long apprenticeship; life itself was to be my school, before I should be able to read it fluently.

"I had scarcely been set free when I hastened to this place--you may imagine with what feelings! In the beginning of my captivity I had received one or two letters from Leonora, in which she conjured me to endure patiently, and to remain faithful, appealing to the God to whom she was hourly sending up her prayers for my release. Her letters had become rarer, and after about two years none had come any more. That was my greatest sorrow; but I always believed that it was the cruelty of my jailors which denied me this consolation, and I ground my teeth and cursed my tormentors.

"I had done them injustice.

"It was far in the night when I reached Fichtenau. I drove directly to the familiar house. I jumped from the carriage and pulled the bell. A window was opened up-stairs; an old woman looked out and asked what I wanted? I inquired after the schoolmaster. 'He died three years ago,' was the curt answer. 'And where is his daughter?' 'You must ask the great gentleman who eloped with her three years ago,' said the woman, and shut the window with violence. I stood thunderstruck. Then I laughed aloud; but I was silenced by an intense pain in the heart--for, Oswald, I had loved Leonora.

"I never knew how I reached the inn. Late in the night I roused the good people from their slumbers by my wild laughing and furious raging. They broke open the door of my room--I was in full delirium. The air of the prison had affected my health, and the fearful blow, finding me utterly unprepared, had shaken the weakened edifice to the foundation. I struggled four weeks for my life, but I clung to it fiercely, and Death had to give up its prey. Woe to me! That death would not have been the ordinary death to me--it would have restored me to life! If I should die now I would die for ever!"

Oswald shuddered. What was the meaning of these mysterious words: "Die forever!" Did they contain that great mystery which was yet hidden from him by a thick veil?

"My convalescence," continued Berger, "lasted long, for my strength had been utterly exhausted. I crept through the streets of the village, leaning on a stick, and rejoiced to find that I could climb, day by day, a few steps higher, until I succeeded at last in reaching this spot here--the scene of an oath, which I had fancied to be sworn for eternity, and which had passed away with the breath of her lips. I came every day here to weep over my lost happiness, and to quarrel with Heaven who lets his sun shine upon the unjust, and hurls his lightnings at the just. For I was, like King Lear, a man more sinned against than sinning. I had meant well and faithfully in all I had hoped and striven for in life. I had loved my native land as a child loves its parents, with a simple, believing heart; and in return it had made me suffer five years in a dungeon. I had loved Leonora with every drop of blood in my heart; and in return she had betrayed me. Up to that moment I had so lived in the world that I could face all and say: Who can accuse me of a sin?--and yet! and yet! I racked my brain to solve the mystery. I had never yet understood fully that life itself is the great sin, from which all other sins flow necessarily, as the stone, once set in motion, must roll inevitably down the precipice. Thus only I gradually comprehended that He cannot be a God of love who created and still creates a world in which the sins of the fathers are punished down to the third and fourth generation--a world, the whole government of which rests on the fearful Jesuitical principles that the end sanctions the means. So far I had always tried to find out only what was good in the world and in men; now my eyes had been opened by sore sufferings for the sufferings of my fellow-beings. I now saw how every page of our history bears the record of some fearful deed that makes our hair stand on end, and our blood curdle in our veins; I saw that there is a dark corner in every man's heart which he never dares look into; that no man yet has lived who did not wish once in his life that he had never been born; I saw that the life of countless multitudes is nothing more than a desperate struggle for existence; that sickness and sin, repentance and sorrow, undermine our life most thoroughly and eat their way to the core like worms in ripe fruit; that at best our pleasures are a dance upon graves--that, if life really ever was precious, death, inexorable death, is forever scorning and scoffing at this precious life. And I looked around on nature, in which poets see an idyll, and I found that it was either dead and insensible, or, when it does feel and sympathize, only repeating the bloody drama of human existence in a ruder and more shocking form. I saw that the different races of animals are engaged in fierce, implacable warfare against each other, uninterrupted by a moment's peace, and that their wars are carried on with a cruelty by the side of which even the most refined tortures of the Inquisition appear at times very harmless proceedings.

"And whilst I thus tore the gay rags to pieces, under which cowardice and stupidity try to conceal the wounds and sores of society, there arose in my heart a feeling which I had not known before--hatred. It was only my love in another form, although I tried to persuade myself that I had forgotten the faithless one; it was only another expression of my fondness of life, although I had fancied that I had forever closed my account with life. When we really give up life, we know nothing more of love or hatred.

"At that time, however, I did hate. Passionately as I had loved, my whole being was concentrated in the one, burning desire to be revenged. Revenge! revenge! on him! on her!--this was the cry of a voice within me, which I could never silence again. They all knew my misfortune in Fichtenau, and felt for me with that cheap sympathy which is composed of delight in scandal and the pleasure we take in the failures of others. They told me, unasked, all that was known about Leonora's flight.

"About the time when my letters had first failed to come to me, a young Polish count had arrived in Fichtenau and taken the rooms in the old schoolmaster's house which I had occupied. Soon the whole town had been full of him, of his beauty and his wealth. They had teased Leonora about her handsome lodger, but she had rebuked all such jests on the part of her young friends with great indignation. Soon, however, they no longer dared to say openly to her what they thought about her relations to the young count, but only whispered it about with bated breath that they had been seen together late at night at such and such places, and that the gold chain which she was now wearing had not been in her possession before. And then came a day on which they had no longer whispered, but proclaimed aloud in the streets, that the schoolmaster's Leonora had eloped the night before with the handsome count, and that her poor old father, a confirmed invalid, had been so deeply affected by the news as to be dangerously ill. A few days later the old man had really died. Of Leonora nothing had been heard since that night.

"Fortunately the name of the count was well known, and that was all I desired in order to carry out my plan of revenge. I took what little remained of my fortune and began my travels--first to Warsaw. There the count was very well known; they described him to me as a profligate young man, who made it the business of his life to seduce beautiful women. An acquaintance added, that he had seen him about two years before in Venice in company with a beautiful lady, who might have been Leonora from his description.

"I went to Venice. There also he was well remembered; he had lived there several months and had then moved to Milan. From Milan they sent me to Rome. There I met with a friend of my youth, a painter. He had seen the count and Leonora very frequently, and pitied the poor girl long before he knew that she had ever been dear to me. He told me that the count had treated her very badly, and laughingly told everybody that no one could do him a more valuable service than by relieving him of this burden. Then the painter hesitated and declined to say more. I conjured him to tell me all, assuring him that I was prepared to hear the worst. At last he yielded, and told me that after some time the count had really found a successor in the person of a French marquis, or at least a pretended marquis, who had taken Leonora with him to Paris. This had occurred about a year ago. The count was said to be living in Naples. I went to Naples, with my friend the painter. I had told him my purpose to have my revenge. He thought it would be very difficult, since the count was as cunning and brave as he was dissipated and cruel. But when he saw me firmly bent upon my purpose, he offered to accompany me. I accepted the offer; for the painter had many acquaintances among the great men of the world, and could introduce me into the circles frequented by the count, to which I would not otherwise have found access.

"We reached Naples. The count was still there, the spoilt pet of the women and the horror of fathers and husbands. The painter succeeded without any trouble in introducing me in good society. For some time chance seemed to defeat every effort I made to meet the count at one of the parties where he was expected. At last I met him at a great soiree given by the Russian Minister. I saw him standing in the centre of a group of ladies and gentlemen, and could not deny him the praise of really superb beauty and an almost irresistible charm of manner. I approached the group, with the painter by my side.

"'Count,' said the painter, 'Doctor Berger, of Fichtenau, desires to make your acquaintance; permit me to present him to you.'

"At the mention of Fichtenau the count had turned pale, and changed countenance in such a manner that all the by-standers were struck by it.

"'I shall not detain you long, count,' said I, stepping forward, 'I only desire to learn from you the present place of residence of that young lady whom you carried off from her paternal home three years ago, and whom you finally sold to a French adventurer in Rome.'

"I said these words calmly, slowly, weighing every syllable. My voice was heard all over the room, for at the first words I uttered everybody had become so silent that you could have heard a pin drop.

"The count had turned still paler, but he soon recovered himself and said:

"'And what right have you to ask such a question at a time and place which you have chosen marvellously well?'

"'I had the misfortune of being engaged to the young lady.'

"'And if I decline giving you the information----'

"'Then I declare you before all these ladies and gentlemen to be from head to foot nothing but a vulgar blackguard.'

"With these words I threw my glove into his face and left the company, after having asked their pardon for the necessity that had forced me to provoke so unpleasant a scene.

"An insult of this kind could only be wiped out by blood, according to the views of the society in which the count moved. To prevent his pleading too great a disparity in social rank I had taken the precaution of wearing my officer's uniform; and besides, the well-known name of my friend, the painter, secured me against the suspicion of being an unknown adventurer. The very favor which the count enjoyed with the ladies had, moreover, made him very hateful to the men, so that everybody was glad to see him thus publicly exposed, and if he had refused to fight me he would probably have lost his standing in society. His few friends had, therefore, shrugged their shoulders, and his enemies had smiled with delight, when he had left the house soon after my departure, and an hour afterwards I received a challenge for the following morning. That was all I desired. I was delighted; and the few hours still wanting till I should see the seducer of Leonora, the murderer of my earthly happiness, at the mouth of my pistol, seemed to me an eternity. I could not bear the confinement of my hotel; I wanted to cool the fever of revenge that burnt in me in the balsamic night air. My friend begged me not to do so, since I might easily take cold during my nightly promenade, as he called it, with an ironical smile. But excited and maddened as I was, I insisted on my purpose, and he accompanied me, but only after having provided daggers for both of us.

"I was soon to learn how much better the painter knew the character of my enemy and the manners of the people among whom we happened to be. We had scarcely gone a few hundred yards from the hotel, and were just turning into Toledo street from a narrow lane, when four men suddenly jumped forth from the deep shadow of a house and fell upon us with incredible fury. Fortunately the painter was a man of gigantic strength, and I also had my good arm and presence of mind. The murderers seemed to be surprised by our resistance. After a few moments they took to their heels. I was going to follow them. 'Let them run,' said the painter, wiping his bloody dagger; 'I fear I have scratched one of them rather too deep. But the fellow was really too zealous to earn the few dollars which the count had given him.'

"I had lost all desire to continue my walk. We returned by the nearest way to our hotel, and awaited the appointed hour with impatience.

"The painter tried to persuade me that I ought not to fight a duel with a man who had resorted to assassination, but should knock him down like a mad dog; but I replied to him that that was exactly what I meant to, do, and that the duel was only an empty ceremony. We became quite warm in the discussion.

"Very unnecessarily so. Morning broke at last; we were the first on the spot; no adversary was to be seen. At last, an hour later, the count's second appeared--a young Italian nobleman--pale and overwhelmed with shame. He told us how sorry he was to have kept us waiting so long, but that it was not his fault. The count had left his house late at night, after having arranged everything with his second, leaving orders for his man servant not to sit up for him. Since that moment he had not been seen again. It seemed to be highly probable that some accident had befallen him, for of course it would be ridiculous to presume for a moment that a man of the count's high social position should have escaped by flight from a duel.

"The painter replied that we could very well afford to wait, and that delay was not defeat. The young nobleman promised to inform us of anything he might learn concerning the count's movements. But the count remained unseen, and I had at last to take the painter's view, which he had already mentioned on the night of our encounter with the assassins, that the count himself had led the attack, being in all probability the very person whose violence had been most conspicuous, and who had been so severely punished by the strong arm of the painter. Either he had died in consequence of the wound received on that occasion, or, what was more probable, he was only wounded and remained concealed in order to avoid giving an explanation of his condition. Perhaps, also, he wished to escape the investigation of the affair by the police, who showed an unusual activity in the matter, as if they had been stimulated by the enemies of the count, and at the same time to escape from an adversary who attached such vulgar importance to matters which in his circle were passed over with a slight smile.

"However this might be, my adversary did not re-appear, and after the strange affair had been for four weeks the favorite topic of conversation all over town--for it had created an enormous sensation--I saw myself compelled to leave Naples without having accomplished my purpose.

"I went by way of Rome--where I took leave of my friend--to Paris. I felt that I had fulfilled my duty only half; the hardest part was yet to be done. I was afraid to meet Leonora again; and yet I wished it almost as earnestly. You will ask how I could take so deep an interest in a person who had so frivolously trifled with my happiness, and who had lost the last relic of respect which might have remained alive for her after her elopement with the Pole, by running away with the Frenchman. But I told you I had loved Leonora with an ardent, demoniacal love, the fire of which had never yet burned out, and which was to burn, alas! long after all was consumed. Besides, I knew that Leonora, however recklessly she might have acted, was in reality not ignoble, but had probably in Rome been forced by a most fearful necessity to leave the man whom she had followed so far from love. I felt that now, if she was still alive, she must most assuredly be wretchedly unhappy.

"I reached Paris. The city was quite familiar to me, for I had already paid two visits there, in company with a few thousand armed friends. Moreover, I had provided myself in Naples with letters of introduction from the painter and several distinguished Italian and French gentlemen, whose acquaintance I had made there. A few inquiries confirmed at once the painter's original suspicion, that the marquis who had carried off Leonora from Rome was an adventurer. A marquis of that name did not exist, had never existed, at all events not in the Faubourg St. Germain. I had to continue my search in other less aristocratic quarters.

"A young Frenchman, an author, whose acquaintance I had made years ago, was my faithful companion in all my wanderings. He was a pleasant man, warmly attached to myself, and has ever since remained my best friend. I had, of course, told him the whole of my sad story; and he, who was far superior to me in knowledge of the world, and especially of that little world which makes up Paris, had first suggested to me to carry my investigations into the Quartier Latin, and other still more modest parts of the city. 'Paris,' said the Frenchman, 'is a place where men and things rarely preserve their original value long; they rise and fall in price with amazing rapidity. During a whole year the poor girl may have passed through very sad changes. If she has not committed suicide--and this is hardly probable, as she would probably have killed herself already in Rome, if she had had the courage to die--she has certainly sunk very low. I pray you prepare yourself for the very worst.'