Читать книгу Only a Girl: or, A Physician for the Soul - Wilhelmine von Hillern - Страница 14

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Ernestine was still lying motionless in Frau Gedike's huge bed, and by her side sat a little nurse scarcely three feet high, swinging her short legs, and thinking how charming it must be to lie in such a great big bed, just like a grown person, and what a pity it was that poor Ernestine slept so much, that she could not enjoy the pleasure. Now and then she turned her fair head round towards the window behind her, through the white curtains of which she could see a dark procession moving away from the house towards the village. When it had disappeared from sight, she gave a little sigh, and swung her feet rather more violently than before,--although she sat very upright, with great dignity of demeanour, for she was entirely conscious of the weighty responsibility of her post. She had been intrusted with the charge of watching Ernestine while the servants were attending the funeral services performed over Bartwich's corpse. When they were concluded, and the funeral procession had left the house, Rieka had begged the little child to keep her place until the gentlemen returned from the church-yard, in order that the maid might perform certain necessary household duties. Angelika--for she it was--undertook the charge with delight. She had given her uncle Neuenstein, who had determined to pay the last honours to Hartwich's remains, no peace until he consented to take her to Ernestine. True, she soon acknowledged to herself that she had never, in her whole long life of eight years, seen any place so tiresome as this quiet room, where nothing was heard but the buzzing of a couple of flies around a spoon in which a drop or two of Ernestine's medicine had been left; but she was not discontented; she sat as still as a mouse, so that she might not disturb the invalid, and did not even venture to look at her, for she had heard that sleepers could be awakened by a look. Only now and then she cast a wistful glance at the pretty book that was clasped tight in Ernestine's embrace. Suddenly the sick child muttered, "I am lying turned round the wrong way in bed." Angelika scrambled down in alarm from her high seat, and ran to the door and cried, "Rieka, Ernestine is saying something!"

The maid hurried in, and Ernestine moved uneasily, and insisted that she was lying with her head towards the foot of the bed. At last Rieka remembered that Ernestine's crib had been placed against the opposite wall, and suspected that she missed the old position. Rightly judging this to be a favourable sign, she quickly and carefully turned the child around in the bed; and when Ernestine stretched out her hand and encountered the wall, where she had been accustomed to find it, she seemed satisfied, and apparently fell asleep again. Then Rieka left the room to finish her work; but, after a few moments, Ernestine opened her eyes, in which for the first time shone the light of intelligence, and looked around. "Angelika!" she said in amazement, and then stared around the room. "Why, this is Frau Gedike's room! and what a large, soft bed!"

"Yes, indeed," Angelika delightedly replied. "Isn't it comfortable? Ah, you poor dear Ernestine, are you beginning to grow a little better? Is your head mended again?"

Ernestine put up her hand to her bandaged head. "What is this?"

"You broke your head. Oh, it was terrible, I know from my dolls,--although it doesn't hurt them, and you can put on new heads; but they couldn't do that for you, and they said you must die; but you haven't died!"

"Oh, yes," said Ernestine, recollecting herself; "now I remember; last night my father struck me and threw me down. Yes, it hurt very much!"

"It was not last night, it was several days ago; but you slept the whole time, and didn't you know that they cut off your hair?" asked Angelika, running to the wardrobe and producing a thick bunch of long black hair. "Look, here it is,--there is some blood on it still, but, if you will only give it to me, I will wash it and make my large walking doll a splendid wig of it. Do, do give it to me, you can't make it grow on your head again."

"I'll give it to you willingly," said Ernestine; "but first ask Frau Gedike whether you may keep it."

"Oh, she is not here any more,--Uncle Heim sent her away!" replied Angelika, drawing the dark strands slowly through her fingers.

"Then ask my father."

This answer utterly discomfited Angelika. "I cannot ask your father," she said in a disappointed tone, putting the hair away regretfully. "He is dead! They put him in the hearse a little while ago,--I saw them."

"Oh," said Ernestine, startled, "is he dead? Why, why did he die just now?"

"I think because he was so angry with you," said Angelika with an air of great wisdom. "Don't you know when I am naughty mamma shuts me up in a dark room? and, because your father was a great deal naughtier than I, God has shut him up in a dark hole in the ground, and he must stay there always."

"Ah, for my sake, the dear God should not have done that, for my sake!" said Ernestine, bursting into tears. "Now I have no father any more; I have nobody; I am all alone in the world! My poor father! it is all my fault that he is put into the narrow grave, where the worms will eat him and there will be nothing left of him but bones. Oh, how horrible! how horrible! I saw a skeleton once in a picture, and my poor, poor father will look just like that!" And she wrung her thin hands and writhed about in the bed, moaning loudly.

Angelika was in despair at the mischief she had done. She had quite forgotten that she had been forbidden, if Ernestine should awake, to speak to her of her father. In the greatest distress she walked to and fro beside the high bed, and at last brought a tall stool, from which, when she had mounted it, she could reach Ernestine. She kissed her, she stroked her cheeks, and laid her chubby hand upon her mouth to silence her, but in vain. At last she hit upon the idea of showing her the book that lay beside her. She opened it at a picture and held it up before her, saying, "Look, dear Ernestine, only look at your beautiful book!" The sick child instantly brushed the tears from her eyes when she saw the picture.

"The swan!" she cried, "the swan! that is the story of the Ugly Duckling!" She hastily took the book out of Angelika's hands and turned over the leaves. Gradually the fairy figures of the snow-queen, the little mermaid, and the rest, obliterated the horrible image of her dead father, and his narrow grave faded away to give place to the shining garden of Paradise, and the clear, broad sea with the fairy palaces beneath its crystal waves. Her sobs grew fainter and fainter, and at last a smile played around her lips when she came to the story of the dryad "Elder Blossom."

"Now I know what a dryad is," she said. "I am glad, I am very glad!"

"What is it that makes you so glad?"

"That a dryad is nothing bad, for--don't you know?--he called me that. I thought it was to mock me, and it hurt me, but it was not so."

"He? who?"

"I don't know his name, your brother, who gave me the book."

"Johannes?" laughed Angelika. "Do you like him?"

"Yes, oh, yes, he is so handsome and good, just like the prince in the Little Mermaid." With these words a light shone in the child's dark eyes. "I would far rather have turned into foam than done anything to hurt him, if I had been the mermaid."

"That is charming! that is splendid!" Angelika declared with delight; "we both love him! He is such a dear brother. It is a pity he has gone away. If he were at home he would come and play with you; oh, he plays so finely!"

"Has he gone away?" asked Ernestine sadly.

"Yes, he has gone to Paris to get me a wax doll; only think!--one that can call 'Papa' and 'Mamma.'"

"Oh, there cannot be such dolls!" said Ernestine with a troubled look.

"Indeed there are, and when she comes I will show her to you. Remember the doll in 'Ole Luckoie;' she could speak, and had a fine wedding."

"But that isn't a true story," said Ernestine wisely, putting her hand to her head, which was beginning to ache badly.

"Only think what a charming thing it is to have a wedding," Angelika ran on. "I once went to a real wedding, and it was almost finer than the one in the story. Oh, the bride has a lovely time! Why, she sits just in the middle of the table, and in front of her is a great, tall cake, with a little house on top of it and a little man inside, a little bit of a man, with a bow and arrows, but no clothes on at all. She has the biggest piece of cake, and they put the dear little man upon her plate, and she is helped first to everything. I was really vexed with my cousin for eating hardly anything. And only think, last of all came ice-cream doves sitting in a nest made of sugar, upon eggs of marchpane! They looked so natural that I was too sorry when my cousin cut off one of their heads; I could have cried, and I determined not to eat any of it, but by the time it came to me, every one could see that it was not a real dove, for it was all melting away, and you had to eat it with a spoon. And there were quantities of champagne, and all the gentlemen made long speeches to the bride, and you had to sit perfectly still and not rattle your spoon at all while they were talking, but when they had done you could scream as loud as you pleased, and clatter your glasses, and the more noise you made the better; and all were pleased and kissed one another; only my cousin sat there so stupidly and cried. I wouldn't have cried when everything was done to please me. And I'll tell you what, when my brother comes back he must bring you a boy doll with a hat and waistcoat, and then he shall marry my doll. He will come in six months, but that must be a long time; for mamma cried when he went away. Perhaps we shall be grown up by then, and can make our dolls' clothes ourselves. That would be lovely."

"But we shall not be grown up in six months," said Ernestine. "First winter must come, and then summer again, and then winter and summer again, before we are grown up!"

"That is terribly long," cried Angelika. "I don't see how we can wait so long."

"And when we are grown up we cannot play with dolls. Then I shall buy myself a telescope like Uncle Leuthold's, and always be looking into the moon, for I like it better than anything."

"Into the moon? Have you ever looked into the moon?" asked Angelika in amazement.

"Indeed I have."

"How does it look there?"

"Oh, beautiful, most beautiful! It shines and gleams so silvery, and it is so calm and quiet, and there are mountains and valleys there just like ours, only they are not coloured, they are just pure light!"

"Did you see the man in the moon?"

"No, I didn't see him; Uncle Leuthold said there are no people in the moon; but I don't believe him. They are only so far off that we can't see them. And they must be much happier and better than we are here; I'm sure they never beat children; and who knows whether perhaps the dear God himself does not live there? If I could fly, I would fly up there!" And she gazed upward with beaming eyes, and a long sigh escaped from her little breast.

"No, dear Ernestine, you must not fly away; no one can tell that the moon is as lovely near to, as it is so far off. And it is very nice here, too, for when you grow up you can be either a mamma or an aunt, and then no one can do anything to you. No one ever strikes my aunt or my mamma--no one!"

But Ernestine was no longer conscious of the child's prattle; her eyes closed, her beloved book dropped from her hands; Ole Luckoie, the gentle Northern god of slumber, had arisen from its pages. He had poured balm into her painful wound, and extended his canopy, with its thousands of gay pictures, over her soul.

Angelika looked at her for awhile, and then asked, "Are you asleep again?" and, upon receiving no answer, she was quite content, and got softly down from the high stool, and seated herself again upon her chair with the grave air of a sentinel. At last Heim, with Herr Neuenstein, came home from the funeral, and the two gentlemen entered the apartment together.

"She has been talking with me," Angelika announced.

"What! has she come to herself?" asked the Geheimrath in pleased surprise.

"Oh, yes,--we talked about a great many things--and then she went to sleep again."

The Geheimrath rubbed his hands.--"That's good! Did she seem to be perfectly sensible?"

"Oh, yes; she was perfectly sensible," Angelika assured him.

"What a pity that I was not here! Now I hope we shall bring her through," said the Geheimrath to Herr Neuenstein; but the latter stood looking at the corpse-like figure of the sleeping child, and shook his head.

"I see," continued the physician, "that it seems impossible to you, and yet I believe she will recover. Who that sees such a faded blossom lying there would suspect the wonderful recuperative energy hidden within it? And I tell you this child possesses an immense amount of vitality, or she would have succumbed to such brutal treatment as she has received. She will recover; believe me, she will recover."

"I should rejoice indeed to think that your exertions will not prove in vain. And you really wish to take her with you?"

"Yes, if her hypocritical uncle will let her go, I will deliver her from his claws, and educate her as is best for her health and becoming to her position as an heiress."

"You are a genuine philanthropist, Geheimrath."

"Yes, I am a philanthropist; but there is small merit in that. Some people love puppies and kittens, others cultivate flowers with enthusiasm,--I love to educate and train human beings. Whenever a pair of melancholy eyes stare out at me from a child's face, I want to stick the child in my herbarium like a rare flower. Yes, if it only cost as little to cultivate children as plants, I should have had a human hot-house long ago. But the taste is so confoundedly expensive."

"Yes, we all know that you spend your whole income in such good works. You might have been a millionaire long ago, if it had not been for your lavish generosity."

"What would you have? One man wastes his money upon one whim, and another on another. This happens to be my whim, and I spend just as much upon it as I can conscientiously in the interest of my adopted son, who stands nearest my heart. But now do me the kindness to leave the room, for our talk is disturbing the child's sleep. I will stay here for an hour and watch her."

"Come, Angelika," said Neuenstein: "Uncle Heim is very cross to-day,--let us go home." He took the child's hand, and nodded affectionately to Heim. "Shall I send the carriage for you?"

"No, I thank you; I must return to the capital; the king has commanded my attendance this afternoon. But I shall be here again to-morrow."

"Adieu, dear uncle," said little Angelika, standing on tiptoe, and holding up her rosy lips to be kissed. "You won't be cross to me, will you?" she asked, nestling her fair curls among his gray locks as he bent down to her; "I have been so good!" And then she went softly out with Herr Neuenstein.

When Heim was alone, he sat down by the bedside, and silently contemplated the sleeping child. "I'll wager," he thought, "that she will be very beautiful one of these days. Her face is older than her years, and that is always ugly in a child, but when her age accords with the earnestness of that brow, and her features lose their sharpness under more kindly treatment, it will be a magnificent head. To think of having such a child and beating it half to death! Such a child!"

Something like a tear glistened in the old man's eyes, and he softly took a pinch of snuff to compose himself, for these thoughts filled him with the pain of an old wound, and well-nigh overcame him. But the pinch was of no avail. He gazed upon the treasure before him, which had fallen to one utterly unworthy such a gift, who had neglected and despised it, and he thought what joy its possession would have given him. And he remembered that such joy might have been his, had his heart not clung unalterably to one who was not destined for him. Now it was too late; and the past, in which he might have sown the harvest of love that he longed to reap, was irrevocable. The passion that had so long filled his heart was conquered and dead; but the longing for affection, that is stronger than passion, still lived on in the old man's breast. "When a man's wife dies and leaves him," he thought, "she lives again in her children; but he who has neither wife nor child is doubly poor." He had watched over many human lives, but not one could he call his own; he had preserved the lives of many, he had given life to none. He had seen the bitterest woes soothed by affection, and he should die without leaving one child behind to mourn his loss. And, lost in such thoughts, it seemed to him that he was actually lying upon his death-bed, and that he felt a soft arm stealing around his neck, and heard a sweet, caressing voice sob out, "Father."

It was Ole Luckoie who had granted him this bitter-sweet dream by Ernestine's bedside; it vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and left nothing behind but a tear on the old man's furrowed cheek.

Then the latch of the door began to tremble, as though a carriage were driving by, and the heavy footsteps that caused the noise approached the apartment. Before the Geheimrath could prevent it, the door was flung open, and Bertha's colossal figure appeared upon the threshold. She was dressed in a new shining black silk, and the stiff cambric lining rustled so loudly as she approached the bed that the child started up frightened, and the Geheimrath could not suppress an exclamation.

"Good-morning, Herr Geheimrath; good-morning, Tina," she said with a nod. "So, Tina, you're alive still, I see. There was no need of such a great fuss about you, after all."

Ernestine, at this rude greeting, flung herself to the farther side of the bed, and cried, "Oh, send my aunt away!--I do not want to see her. I will not!"

The Geheimrath politely offered his arm to the intruder and conducted her from the room without a word. Bertha, amazed, asked, "Why, what have I done? Can't I see my niece?"

"If you yourself do not understand, madam, that this frail life needs to be treated with the greatest possible tenderness, I, a physician, must tell you that it will be your fault if my care of the child should prove of no avail and she should die in spite of it. I must therefore entreat you either to discontinue your visits to the child, or to address her more gently."

"Why, goodness gracious!" cried Bertha, "I was only in jest. Mercy on me! you may wrap her up in cotton-wool, for all I care."

The Geheimrath gave an involuntary sigh. "Poor child," he thought, "to be in danger of falling into such hands!"

Suddenly the hall-door was opened, and a face appeared, so ashy pale, so livid, that Bertha started in terror. It was Leuthold; but he was hardly to be recognized. When he perceived the Geheimrath, he saluted him with his usual courtesy, then, extending his hand to Bertha, said in a low voice, "My dear Bertha, be kind enough to come up-stairs with me."

She followed him in the greatest trepidation, for she had never before beheld him thus; and on the joyful day of Hartwich's funeral, too! What could have happened? He took her hand and conducted her up the staircase, his fingers were as cold and clammy as those of a corpse. She almost shuddered as they walked along together in such solemn silence.

They reached the door of their own apartment. Leuthold entered, dragged his wife in after him, closed the door, and, before she was aware of what he was doing, she felt the icy hand around her throat like an iron band.

"Shall I strangle you?" he gasped, with eyes like a serpent's when it is wound around its victim.

"Merciful Heaven!" shrieked Bertha, falling upon her knees to extricate herself. The cold hand grasped her throat still more tightly.

"Utter one sound that the servants can hear, and I will throttle you!" hissed Leuthold. "Be quiet! or----" Bertha ceased struggling, and almost lost her consciousness. He then released her and pushed her down upon the sofa, where she sat utterly astounded.

He put his hand to his head, and then whispered, almost inaudibly, as though speaking with the greatest difficulty, "On the day of Ernestine's fall, when Heim came to the house, do you remember that I strictly enjoined it upon you to observe narrowly whatever occurred in the house?"

"Yes," stammered the frightened woman.

"Did you do it?"

No answer.

"You did not do it."

"I was so afraid of Hartwich that I went up-stairs again," Bertha confessed with hesitation.

"And so,--" Leuthold's chest heaved, his breath came heavily, and he clenched his hands convulsively, "and so it is your fault that Hartwich has disinherited us and left all his property to Ernestine." His face grew still paler, his slender figure tottered, he grasped at a chair for support, and fell fainting upon the ground.

"Good God!" shrieked Bertha, shaking the prostrate man violently, "the whole property? tell me, the whole property? Oh, you miserable man, what folly to fall into such spasms! Speak, and tell me whether we have nothing at all, or what we have!"

Leuthold slowly raised his head. Bertha carried, more than supported, him to the sofa. She brought some eau-de-cologne and poured it over his head so that it ran into his eyes. He uttered an exclamation of pain, and tried to wipe away the burning fluid from his eyes. "Are you trying to deprive me of my eyesight?" he groaned, and, when the pain was relieved, he sat in a dejected attitude, staring into vacancy.

"For mercy's sake, speak!" cried Bertha. "You can, at least, open your mouth. No legacy? Not an annuity?"

Leuthold looked at his unfeeling wife with an expression that, in spite of herself, drove the blood to her cheeks. There was something indescribable in the look,--a mixture of the pity and contempt with which one contemplates the body of a suicide.

"An annuity of six hundred thalers," he murmured, and covered his eyes with his hand, as if to shut out everything around him while he collected his scattered senses.

"Too much to die upon, and too little to live upon!" moaned Bertha, and, bursting into tears, she threw herself upon a chair in the farthest corner of the room. Leuthold sat motionless for a long time, his face hidden in his hands; he scarcely seemed to breathe. He appeared to need all his physical strength to assist him to endure the mental agony which was overpowering him,--to have no strength left to stir a limb. The man of feeling tries to master his unhappiness by raging and lamenting,--he combats his agony by physical exertion,--he rushes hither and thither, beats his head against the wall, wrings his hands, and lessens his woe in a degree by a certain amount of muscular activity. The man of intellect struggles mentally, and stands in need of entire physical repose. Such a man as Leuthold could only for a moment be excited to violence against the hated cause of his misfortune; he soon regained his exterior composure, and his misery became an intellectual labour, which might produce loss of reason, and was never-ceasing.

He sat lost in a profound reverie. Now and then, like lightning across a cloud, some idea of help in his misery flashed across his brain, but it vanished as soon as it appeared, leaving each time a blacker night in his soul.

"The sacrifice of ten long years gone for nothing!" he said at last in stifled accents. "My hair is bleached before its time with the slavery to which I have submitted with this goal in view, and now the prize is snatched from me just as it seemed within my reach. Again I must bow my neck to the yoke, and, with a mind fitted to appropriate to itself the most precious treasures of science, toil for my bread! I have wasted the best years of my life, that I may now begin all over again--an old man. It was indeed a losing game! When my powers began to fail me, I comforted myself with hopes of a near release; but now what can sustain me when that hope has deserted me? No release in future,--nothing but a never-ending struggle for daily sustenance! Oh----!"

With a long-drawn sigh of mortal agony, the tortured roan buried his face in the cushion of the sofa, and another long silence ensued, broken only by Bertha's loud sobbing.

At last she could endure the silence no longer. "What is to be done now?" she asked half sorrowfully, half defiantly.

"Let me alone," said Leuthold. "Leave me--you see how I am suffering and struggling!"

"How did you know about the matter?" she insisted.

"That fellow Lederer whispered it to me on returning from the funeral. He signed the will as a witness. We were separated in the crowd, and I could not even ask him whether I was left guardian or not. If I were only guardian----" He ceased, and sunk again into a profound reverie.

There was a slight noise in the adjoining room, and a lovely, smiling child's face looked in, and a clear, musical voice cried, "Peep!" At the sound Leuthold turned his head and looked with strange emotion towards the place where his daughter was standing. The little girl planted herself firmly upon her feet, and, after a couple of futile attempts, managed, to her own great delight, to cross the high threshold. This difficulty surmounted, she tripped gleefully across to her mother, who sat nearest the door; but upon receiving a rude repulse from her--a repulse that almost threw her down--she determined to pursue her journey as far as her father. To insure her swifter progress, she betook herself to all fours, and, when she reached her goal, climbed up by her father's knees and smiled into his face. Leuthold gazed for a few moments into her round, innocent eyes; his own grew dim; he took the child in his arms and whispered, as he clasped her to his breast, "Poor child!" His breath came quick--he clasped her tighter and tighter in his arms, until suddenly a burst of tears relieved his overburdened soul. The father's heart was filled for once with pure human emotion.

Gretchen tried to wipe his eyes with her little apron, and patted his cheeks with her chubby hands.

There is a wonderful power in the touch of a child's soft, pure hand, soothing a wildly-beating heart and strengthening a soul sickened by hope deferred. It seemed to Leuthold as if the wounds that had tormented him were healed by that gentle touch. He kissed the rosy little palms again and again. He would labour with all his might for this child--she should have a brilliant future at any cost. He arose, and, putting her gently down on the carpet, walked slowly to and fro with folded arms, revolving in his busy brain a thousand plans for the future. His thoughts were rudely disturbed by Bertha, who, for want of any other object, wreaked her ill humour upon Gretchen. The child had got hold of an embroidered footstool, and was engaged in the delightful occupation of picking off the bugles and pearls fastened upon the fringe. Bertha snatched it away, and was slapping the little hands violently, when suddenly Leuthold seized her arm and held it in a firm grasp, while anger flashed in his eyes; and his words, his bearing, his whole manner, filled her with terror as he began: "Your nature is so coarse that you cannot even appreciate the promptings of maternal instinct. Had you possessed one atom of feminine feeling, you would have seen what a comfort the child is to me, and would have lavished tenderness upon her, instead of maltreating her. But of what consequence are my sorrows to you? When I staggered and fell to the ground beneath the weight of my misery, you thought only of yourself; your gentlest word to me was 'miserable man.' Let me tell you, however, that the weakness of an ailing man is not so repulsive as the rude strength of a coarse woman. Therefore, be kind enough to moderate the exhibition of your strength, at least towards this angel, who shall never suffer for an hour as long as I draw breath."

Bertha put Gretchen on the ground, and stood with arms akimbo. "Oh!" she began, trembling with rage, "is this the tone you begin to take--talking in this way to me just when you ought to be grateful to me for consenting to share your wretched lot?"

"My wretched lot?" repeated Leuthold, while his face grew deadly white again. "Who has made my lot a wretched one?--who other than yourself? Do you dare to increase its misery? Is not your disobedience, your folly, the cause of the whole misfortune? If you had obeyed my commands, and kept watch upon what was going on in the house, the arrival of the lawyers would not have escaped you. You might have informed me and I could, even at the last moment, have prevented the making of that will. You, and you alone, have ruined my child's and my own future; and, instead of falling at my feet and begging for forgiveness, you dare to reproach me! It would be ridiculous, if it were not so deplorable!"

"Of course." said Bertha, "it is all my fault. I expected that. Why didn't you stay at home yourself and watch? Because you suspected nothing, no more than I did, and because you wanted to get out of the way of Heim, who knew all about your former disgrace. Is it my fault that you have conducted yourself so in the past that you have to avoid all your old acquaintances?"

Leuthold swelled with indignation. "Silence, wretched woman! Would you drive me to extremities?"

"Yes," continued Bertha more angrily than ever,--"yes, I don't care now what you do. The only satisfaction I can have now is speaking out the truth to you for once. I will be reconciled to my father while there is time. Perhaps he will make over the business to me. I understand how to conduct it, and can make it pay. I shall have a better chance there, at any rate, than in staying here to starve with you. My honest old father was right when he warned me against you. Heaven only knows what infatuated me so with your hatchet face. I saw from the first what you were,--a heap of learning and mind, and a perfect icicle, with whom I never could be happy. We had only been married two months, when there was all that disgraceful fuss with Hilsborn; my father wanted me to be separated from you then; but you stuffed my ears with stories of your brother here, who would make you rich; and I believed you, and gave up my old father, and came here to this hole to live with you. What did I get by it? The little property that I inherited from my mother has been frittered away in household expenses, that you might seem disinterested to your brother. I gave up every things--concerts, theatres, parties,--and willingly; for I depended upon a brilliant future. I have waited patiently and obediently until your brother should kill himself with the drink of which he was so fond; and, now that he is dead, what have I got in exchange for time, youth, money, and all? And now I am to make a grateful courtesy, and say, 'My dear husband, 'tis true that you have robbed me of everything, you have attempted to strangle me; but I will nevertheless take the liberty of remaining with you, that you may continue to enjoy the pleasure of calling me rough, coarse, and good for nothing, and that you may instruct me with which hand I am to put in my mouth the potatoes that are all we shall have to live upon.' This is what I am to say, is it not? Yes----"

Leuthold had been listening attentively, and, in the course of this long speech, had regained his former composure. He now interrupted her with, "That is, in other words, that you contemplate adding to my misfortunes the withdrawal of your amiable presence, leaving me to bear my heavy lot alone. Your intention demands my gratitude; if you wish for a divorce, I am entirely agreed to it, only pray furnish the ground for it yourself, that my good name may not be compromised. We have lived together hitherto in such outward harmony, it might be difficult to convince a court of the impossibility of a longer union. There must, therefore, be some legal ground for a divorce, and you can arrange all that to suit yourself."

"What!" cried Bertha, "am I to conduct myself disgracefully that people may despise me and pity you,--wolf in sheep's clothing that you are? No, no; I'm not quite so stupid as that. And then my father would not receive me, and there would be nothing left for me in this world."

Leuthold walked thoughtfully to and fro. "It was the mistake of my life that ten years ago I married you to get money to make that journey to Trieste. I thought you more harmless than you are. For ten long years I have endured the annoyance of your coarseness and narrow-mindedness. Such a wife as you are is a perpetual thorn in the side of such a man as myself; my nerves have suffered terribly. And now I find you are not even capable of maternal affection,--you cannot treat your child as you should. If it were not for Gretchen, I would never see you again,--but now----"

Bertha started. "Why, yes,--I never thought of Gretchen."

"You can easily understand that I shall not give up my child," Leuthold went on, looking fondly at the lovely little creature, who was sitting on the carpet prattling softly and unintelligibly to herself. "She is all that is left to me of my shattered existence;--my last hopes in life are centred in her--I will never give her up! The law gives her to you if I should furnish grounds for a divorce: so, you see, I cannot take the initiative. If, however, you consent to a separation, and will leave Gretchen to me, you are free to leave my house whenever you please. Consider what I say."

Bertha knelt down upon the carpet, and said in a complaining tone, "Gretel, shall mamma go far away?"

The child, in whose mind the remembrance of the slaps that had made its little hands so red was still very lively, avoided her caress, and crept away as fast as it could to its father's feet.

"Its choice is made," said Leuthold, taking it in his arms.

"Of course you are quite capable of setting my own flesh and blood against me," whined Bertha. "What shall I do! I cannot leave the child, and I will not stay with you. What shall I do!"

She walked heavily up and down the room, wringing her hands. Leuthold had carried Gretchen to the window, and was looking down into the court-yard, where the broad, stalwart figure of Heim was just leaving the house. He shot one glance of deadly hatred at his enemy, but it did no harm; and with a profound sigh Leuthold leaned his cold forehead against the window-frame and looked on whilst Heim stepped into his carriage and took a pinch of snuff with a most cheerful air. The driver clambered clumsily upon the box, and gathered up his whip and reins, the horses started off, the chickens flew in all directions, their old friend the watch-dog came barking out of his kennel, and the old-fashioned coach, belonging to the Hartwich establishment, rattled away.

As, after seasons of intense emotion, the exhausted mind slavishly follows the lead of the ever-active senses, Leuthold, in his misery, thus minutely observed every particular of Heim's departure.

"He is happy!" he thought; and then his eyes rested upon the fowls devouring the remains of the oats that had been brought for the horses. "Happy he to whom has been given the faculty of making himself beloved! mankind follow him as those fowls follow in the track of Heim's carriage. Is it any merit of his that wins him the hearts of all? Bah, nonsense! it is a talent,--and the most profitable one for its possessor. These benefactors of mankind, as they are called, thrive upon it: who would not do likewise if he only could? But those who have not the gift cannot do it. One man comes into the world with qualities that make him useful and pleasing to his fellow-men; another with propensities that make him an object of fear to his kind. Is the lapdog to be commended because his agreeable characteristics qualify him to spend his life luxuriously on a silken cushion? And is the fox to be blamed because he does not understand how to ingratiate himself with mankind, but must eke out his miserable existence by theft? Each after his kind, and we human beings have senses in common with the brutes,--and why not the peculiarities also of their several species? Yes, there are lapdogs among us, and foxes, and wolves, cats, and tigers! Struggle against it as we may, with all our babble of free will, temperament is everything. How can I help it if I belong among the foxes? Only a fool would look for moral causes in all this chaos of chances. The activity of nature is shown in eternal creation, destruction, and re-creation from destruction,--plants, brutes, and men are the blind tools of her secret forces, creative and destructive, or, as the moralist calls them, good and evil! But what do we call good? What pleases us. What evil? That which harms us. And we are to judge the world by this narrow egotistic scale of morals? Oh, what folly! Creative and destructive forces--are they not alike necessary agents in nature's great workshop? And if they work so steadily in unconscious matter, are they dead in mankind, the embodiment of conscious nature? Is our poor, patched-up code of morals strong enough to tear asunder the chains that keep us bound fast to the order of the universe? No,--it is miserable arrogance to maintain such a theory. Nature has never created a species without producing another hostile to it; the rule holds good in the world of humanity as well as among plants and brutes. The parasite that preys upon its supporting plant, the insect depositing its eggs in the body of the caterpillar, the falcon pursuing the innocent dove, the tiger rending the mild-eyed antelope, and, lastly, the man who preserves his own existence by preying upon his fellow-men,--all are only the exponents of those hostile forces that are indispensable to the economy of nature. Who can venture to talk of good and evil? There is only one idea that we owe to our advanced culture,--only one varnish that bedaubs and conceals the beast in us,--regard for appearances! This is the corner-stone of our ethics, the only thoroughly practicable discipline for the human race. Let a due regard for appearances be observed, and we are distinguished, lauded, and beloved among men,--the only reward of our virtue is the recognition of it by our excellent contemporaries; their judgment decides the degree of our morality; everything else is the exaggeration of fancy."

He was aroused from this reverie by Bertha, who suddenly shook him by the shoulder with an impatient "Well?"

Leuthold looked at her like a man awakened from a dream. "What is it?" he inquired.

"I want to know what is to be done?" she replied angrily.

Leuthold laid the child, who had fallen asleep upon his shoulder, on the sofa.

"Oh, yes, with regard to our separation."

"I suppose you had entirely forgotten it."

"I confess that I was thinking of something else at the moment; but the matter is very simple. Go to your father and effect a reconciliation with him. Gretchen will stay with me. You are free to go and come as you please. If you find that you cannot do without the child, in a few weeks you can return, if you choose. It would, at all events, be better for you to be away for awhile until I have rearranged my miserable affairs. I am going now to hear the will read. If I am appointed Ernestine's guardian, my life will be connected for the future with that of my ward." He suddenly gazed into vacancy, as if struck by a new idea, then started and seized his hat. "Yes, yes, I must go. Perhaps I am guardian!" And he turned away.

Bertha called after him, "Then I may get ready to go?"

"Do just as you please," he replied, turning upon the threshold with all the old courtesy, and then disappeared. Bertha went to her wardrobe and began to collect her possessions. "I am rightly paid for leaving a good head-waiter in the lurch for the sake of a fine doctor. If I had married Fritz, I should now have been the landlady of a hotel, while, the wife of a doctor, I don't know where to lay my head!" She looked across the room at the sleeping child. "If I only had not that child, I should be easier! But, then, it is his child. She loves him far better than me. It will be just like him one day, and a sorrow to me," she muttered. Then, as if the last thought were repented of as soon as conceived, she hastened up to Gretchen, and, weeping, kissed her pure white forehead. "No, no, you cannot help me!" she sobbed, and snatched the child to her broad breast.